Miwa Yanagi


Miwa Yanagi is a Japanese photographic artist who examines self-image and stereotypes of women in contemporary Japanese society. Yanagi was discovered by conceptual photographer Yasumasa Morimura, who noticed some of her work while borrowing her house as a set for a separate project.

Biography

Miwa Yanagi was born in 1967 in Kobe, Japan. She completed her postgraduate course work at the Kyoto City University of Arts. She is known mainly as a photographer and video artist. She creates an elaborate,and often costly staged event using female models ranging in different ages. After the picture or video is taken, the image may be altered with computer graphics. Her artworks examines self-images and stereotypes of Japanese women in contemporary Japanese society.
Yanagi was influenced by a teacher in high school who was passionate for his artwork. She decided to go into art at Kyoto City University of Arts. After graduating from Kyoto City University of Arts, she began working as a teacher where she began to realize that she was not individualized but rather forced to play an ordinary role of a woman teacher. Her big break came when she was nominated to be in an exhibition in Germany in 1996 at the Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. It was here that her works were exhibited along with artists like Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. The international exposure to a commercial art market gave her major advantage over other Japanese artists. Because of the lack of a contemporary art market in Japan and her success in Germany in 1996 she decided to display her work overseas. Yanagi currently works and lives in Kyoto, Japan.

Artwork

''Elevator Girls''

Yanagi's best known body of works is her first, Elevator Girls. With it, she focuses on themes of everyday life, self-identity, architecture, and employment in the world of girls who operate the elevators of Japanese department stores. Elevator Girls first started as performance piece early in her career. It was to represent and reflect on what Yanagi was going through at this time. The performance was about a young girl who works in a narrow box, who has to repeat the same task over and over again, day after day. The later photographs of Elevator Girls show women dressed similarly and who often show very little emotion. The switch from performance art to photography was because Yanagi wanted complete control in what was going on. These young models are all physically similar in body composition. The way they are posed shows that they are restricted on what they can do and where they can go, much as restrictions are placed on women culturally. In the photos the elevator girls stare at architectural design or consumer goods. The staring represents society's obsession with consumer goods. These standardized young women in her artwork series symbolized the capitalistic and patriarchal society of Japan and how the roles of women in the workforce of Japan is suppressed and idealized to serve and obey their male-dominated society.

''My Grandmothers''

My Grandmothers was next. The series focuses on how young girls from between 14 and 20 years old perceive and what they thought their life would be like in 50 years. If she liked the answer and felt inspired to work with it the interview was later photographed with models, some of whom came from the Elevator Girls series. During the interview process she eliminates those who seem to lack any real life experience. She believes that younger people restrict what they can do. When the age restriction is released, women are freer to express their wishes and desires. The more restricted a young girl feels today closely relates to the degree of freedom she will feel 50 years from now. After the interview is accepted, drawings are made. Then Yanagi photographs the scene she has imagined and put on paper. The photograph is then altered on a computer, to merge the girl's idea and Yanagi's surreal dream. The results show emotions ranging from sad to funny. A girl named Mie imagines that in 50 years she will be lonely, looking around a field of empty landscapes during a time of a cataclysm. One named Yuka believes she will be living somewhere on the U.S. coast without a care in the world and with a playboy for a lover. Along with each photo comes a verse based on the interviews and the photos.

''Fairy Tales''

In Yanagi's third popular series, Fairy Tales, she focuses on stories in which the main characters are usually simultaneously both old and young and deals with the relationships between the two ages. The stories are based on fairy tales told by the Brothers Grimm, which are often more gruesome and horrible than the watered-down versions told to children. The gruesome quality appealed to Yanagi and helped her show the difference between youth and old age. She first released the series in 2005 at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art and Ohara Museum of Art. They are presented as large black-and-white photos. Yanagi abandons her computer here for more traditional methods. She also uses models who are not Japanese. Young mixed-raced girls are given wigs, makeup, and latex masks to look like old, witch-like, hags. What is left is a strange unresolved combination of an old woman with youthful limbs and appendages, confusing the distinction between old and young. For example, in the 2005 Snow White, a young girl can be seen looking into the mirror, but instead of a beautiful young lady looking back at her, she sees an old unattractive old lady. In a second example, Gretel, a young girl can be seen gnawing on the finger of an unseen witch. This leaves the viewer wondering which is the captor. This series is the complete opposite of Elevator Girls, where the models are shown as pretty, have little emotion and are similar.

Video

In the video Suna Onna Yanagi shows the relationship between a child and her grandmother. The grandmother tells the granddaughter of her meeting with a sand woman as a child. It is meant to be a tale of transformation and the supernatural world. In other videos she shows uniformed women who change their surroundings with a wave of their hand.

Performances

Although known more for photography and video, Yanagi also did performance pieces before she switched to photography. The main subject was what she was going through as a young woman in Japan. Elevator Girls was originally a performance piece. Yanagi also did another performance piece in which she hired someone who was to show contemporary art in a museum to visitors as a real guide would. Yanagi gave them a script on what to say and at what points during the tour that they were supposed to perform certain gestures. The guide was totally believable in this performance, wearing the same uniform as regular tour guides and speaking in the same manner. People seemed more interested in the tour guide than the actual art work. Some people even left the museum after the guide finished speaking. In Yanagi's view the performance is about the feeling of pleasure and the experience. It was more about the performance by the guide than actual artwork in the museum. Yanagi's current subjects are the lives of women and how they are perceived in the modern world. Here she looks on how women are treated and viewed by society and also how women culturally view themselves.
In 2013, Zero Hour: Tokyo Rose's Last Tape was performed at the Japan Society in New York. Zero Hour deals with the story of Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American DJ for a propagandist radio program who was arrested upon return to the US in 1950 and wrongly found guilty of treason. Employing interpretive dance, projected images and traditional dialogue, Yanagi says Zero Hour "explores the role of media in the context of theatre".

Exhibitions

In 1993 Yanagi held her first solo exhibition, and since 1996 her work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows throughout Europe and the United States.
Her solo shows include:
Her group exhibitions include: