Mariko Mori: Inspiration

Mariko Mori: Inspiration

Inspiration comes from many forms; it comes from friends, family, music, television, and even strangers. Inspiration can come at one subtlety or it can hit you like a bus. Professional, amateur, or even a novice can be inspired to make something. No matter what, an artist needs inspiration in order to create something out of nothing or in order to help finish an already existing art work. Here the inspiration from Mariko Mori will be conveyed, to know what helps give her inspiration that motivates her to do the art work that she does. Whether she herself is doing the performance or it is just a sculpture in a gallery, her works are unique, just like a finger print. What gave her the inspiration on two of her works;

Nirvana (1996-97), Birth of a Star (1995).

Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1967 to a European art historian and an inventor. She first began working as a fashion designer and as a model in the 1980s. She later developed as an artist in London at the Chelsea School of Art, and then rigorously at the theoretical Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. This type of background has given her a unique footing for all of her art work, as she continues to analyze to a more complicated and mixed nature of one's personal identity as a world citizen. During her time as a fashion designer, she has designed clothing as well as organized sets. She would choose the locations and selected the photographers, which produces tableaux wearing of her own designs. This ended up being a technical choice as it would be the determining factor in her stylistic development in all her art works. As new forms emerged, she began to incorporate them into her art pieces. An example art piece would be placing herself multiple times in different poses in a large picture of a man-made beach, Empty Dream (1995).

For the Nirvana piece of 1996-97, Mariko Mori's art began to take a more spiritual aspect of Buddhist art.

In her photograph she began to place herself as a goddess in a floating position in a infinite landscape and seascape. Her transformative impulses went from confronting quotidian concerns, to a divine matter of mythological emphasis. Nirvana is one of three large works of art that have technical and intelligent aspiring pieces that look for nothing but in making the viewer thinking of about her works. The way that she combines art and science is of a personal matter to her. Part of her inspiration for this is her parents, one a Europe art historian and the other an inventor. She uses both of these as a way to incorporate into her works, using the technology that comes out or the ones already available. She uses them so the viewers can have a well thought out discussion about her art pieces. As well as inviting them to feel the enlightenment that gives the audience a way to leave their earthly aspirations and burdens from their every day lives. Nirvana was meant to help the audience think of other topics as they looked upon the piece. Helping them escape the mundane and stressful times in their lives. The title itself suggest this: in Buddhism nirvana is the state achieved by Buddha through meditation, signifying his ability to transcend suffering and karma. Nirvana is also a part of the Pure Land (1996-98) art work. Both are made of billboard sized with digitally

made photographs, with a 3-d video added, and the acrylic Enlightenment Capsule in the shape of a lotus flower that was made to have the artist stand in the piece when needed.

Mariko Mori's Birth of a Star (1995) is about a "cyber popster." The "cyber popster" is a Japanese teen in a computer-manipulated photograph with android eyes, spiky hair, wearing a pair of white go-go boots, and with futuristic plastic adornments with oversized headphones and a radio that we can listen to.

Which was made to seem like a perfect product and embodiment of contemporary popular culture. In her mind, Mori believes that the Japanese people have let go of their traditional ways and moved to embrace more of what the Western culture has to offer. she also believe that popular culture is a way for people to free themselves of the everyday mundane aspects of life. Japan has something unique that lets the people of Japan embrace a different culture and add to it their own traditions and make it their own. Mori has shown this in Birth of a Star by adding western culture into the piece while still making it seem like it is strictly from Japan. The function that Birth of a Star has is to give the viewer is to put off the viewer and to seduce the viewer by Mori's ambiguousness. It can also be seen as her way of predicting her own success in the world of art. This piece also helps one to feel the balanced blending of Japanese tradition with Western

culture.

Mariko Mori gets her inspiration from her parents careers. As the daughter of a European art history scholar and an inventor she has taken what they do and blending it into her art works from the start of her career. She also uses Japanese traditions and blending them thoroughly with the Western culture to make pieces that make the audience think and escape their worlds, even if only for a moment. She tries to make her own future and a utopia with her works by combining what she has seen and felt. Mori then began using the social criticism to bring to light al the issues that Japan was facing at the time. Then, when she was making the Nirvana piece she also had inspiration from the five elements of Buddhism; fire, air, water, earth, and empty space in order to create a futuristic scene of nirvana. For the performance aspect of the art that she does, what first motivated her to do so was a tea ceremony that she performed at the age of three. The new technology that emerges helps to motivate her. She will collaborate with other artist to help them with their technology and in return they help her with the aesthetics for her art works. She uses science and religion in her works to ask questions: Where do we come from? What is reality? What is the self? Just to list a few of the questions. She also see's Andy Warhol as a main influence and recognizes a large influence in her own art works. The freedom that he had in stepping out of tradition and to cross the barrier of what the territory of the fine arts was considered to be. These are some of the conditions that help her in the making of her arts. To make the audience think and speak about what her art means, for the present and for the future.