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Miko No Inori

A photograph of a video installation on a large screen in a dark gallery. On the screen is a lower half of a woman who is dressed in a white, iridescent costume. The woman cradles a glass sphere in her hands.

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  • A photograph of a video installation on a large screen in a dark gallery. On the screen is a lower half of a woman who is dressed in a white, iridescent costume. The woman cradles a glass sphere in her hands.

Date:

1996

Artist:

Mariko Mori
Japanese, born 1967

About this artwork

Working with a studio of designers and technicians, Mariko Mori uses sophisticated technology to realize ambitious productions in diverse media including video, large-scale photography, and 3-D imaging. Turning to fashion, pop culture, and science fiction as aesthetic templates, she creates high-gloss digital dreamscapes that refer to Buddhist thought and religious iconography while presenting an optimistic vision of a technological future. Melding Eastern and Western forms and mixing transcendental themes with open appeals to visual pleasure, the artist proposes a cultural condition in which aesthetics, spirituality, and technology intermingle.
Miko No Inori, which translates as the Shaman-Girl’s Prayer, is set in a digitally transformed version of Osaka’s international airport, which seems to be at once a vaulted temple and a sleek, futuristic space. As in many of her videos, Mori appears as a cyborg—a fantasy woman, half-machine, half-human—in this instance, dressed in a white, iridescent costume that complements her reflective ice blue eyes. She cradles and caresses a glass sphere while a haunting pop song plays. The figure recalls a fortune-teller with her proverbial crystal ball, but she also invites other interpretations that coexist uneasily: she can be seen as a bodhisattva—a spiritual guide who forgoes nirvana out of compassion for those who suffer—but she also resembles a model promoting a new product, gazing directly at the audience with her glass orb seductively in hand.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Mariko Mori

Title

Miko No Inori

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1996

Medium

Video (VHS), transferred to digital, color, sound; 29:23 min. loop

Credit Line

Gift of Donna and Howard Stone

Reference Number

2007.37

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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