The Beauty of the Prison:
Miwa Yanagi's Digital Dream Architecture
From 1/31 through 3/28/2004, the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin will be
showing works by the young Japanese photo-artist Miwa Yanagi. Her visions
of urban space reveal a secret pleasure in a disturbed reality in which
facts and fiction melt into one. Maria Morais on codes, uniforms,
labyrinthine prisons, and the role of women in Yanagi's digital dream
worlds.
Miwa Yanagi: My Grandmothers, Minami, 2000, Deutsche Bank Collection, ©Miwa
Yanagi
"My secretaries are certainly
efficient, but they can really be a pain in the neck. No matter where I
go, they always track me down and bring me back to this room. What's wrong
with the president of the company going out dressed up in this costume,
anyway? Wearing these things isn't just a hobby - it's a way for me to
stay fit." (from the series My Grandmothers, Minami,
2000)
The youthful defiance in the text accompanying
Miwa Yanagi's portrait Minami springs from a future vision; for her
series My Grandmothers
, the photo-artist interviewed young Japanese women, asking them how they
imagined themselves to be in fifty years' time. The fantasies that ensued
span a wide spectrum: in the company of a young man,
Yuka (2000) speeds down America's West Coast on a motorcycle; in their
house, Regine & Yoko (2001) throw wild parties for their
friends; the aged model
Eriko (2001) ponders her past beauty on a grave stylized to resemble a
fashion runway; and Minamo is still dreaming of success. What is
remarkable about all these stories is that most of the women see their
future as a further extension of their present life: dynamic grannies by
anyone's standards, whose age plays no more than a superficial role.
Miwa Yanagi: My Grandmothers, Regine & Yoko, 2001,Deutsche Bank Collection,
©Miwa Yanagi
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Although the series' title suggests a family context,
husbands and children are largely absent from these visions, a feature due
in part to Miwa Yanagi's (read another article
here)own selection: "Not everyone can be included in the My
Grandmothers series. My preference is the key… even if she lives with
someone else or a family, I prefer a woman who can stand on her own feet.
(…) Those are my ideal women."
Yanagi (read an interview
here) is concerned with more than just the private desires of a generation
of young Japanese women. The distant, cool aesthetic of My Grandmothers
reflects contemporary Japanese society as a whole. The artist grew up during
the so-called Bubble Economy, a time marked by strong economic growth; in
the aftermath, Japan has found itself confronted with a steady drop in
birth rates and a loss of traditional values and ways of life.
Particularly in the media-permeated big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka,
the discrepancy between yesterday and today is becoming increasingly
obvious.
Miwa Yanagi at her Studio
When the artist took
part in the Prospect '96 exhibition in Frankfurt's
Schirn in 1996, she quickly became well-known. Since then, she has been
using her critical and curious eye to create a comprehensive body of work
that significantly illuminates modern Japanese reality. Three large-scale
photographic series have resulted, and the aim of the research lying at
their core quickly becomes clear; oscillating between memory, idea, and
fantasy, Elevator
Girls (1993-1999), My Grandmothers (since 1999), and her
latest project
Granddaughters (since 2002) present a panorama of spatial utopias in
which fact and fiction merge.
Miwa Yanagi: Elevator Girl House 3F, 1998, Deutsche Bank Collection, © Miwa
Yanagi
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