Test your design IQ

Who is this Japanese video and photographic artist who worked as a fashion model in the ‘80s?

MANILA, Philippines - She was born in 1967 in Tokyo, Japan and is a Japanese video and photographic artist. While studying at Bunka Fashion College, she worked as a fashion model in the late ‘80s. This strongly influenced her early works such as “Play with Me” in which she takes control of her role in the image, becoming an exotic, alien creature in everyday scenes. In 1989, she moved to London to study at the Chelsea College of Art and Design.

The juxtaposition of Eastern mythology with Western culture is a common theme in her works, often through layering photography and digital imaging, such as in her 1995 installation “Birth of a Star.” Later works like “Nirvana” show her as a goddess, transcending her early roles via technology and image and abandoning realistic urban scenes for more alien landscapes.

For her work “Play With Me,” she was standing outside a Tokyo toy store and dressed herself as a sexy cyborg — with light blue hair in long ponytails, metallic blue plastic in a hard-shell articulation of erotic body parts, silver plastic gloves and a dress. She was trying to show that she connects to the robotic toys inside the store, but also to show her available unemotional sexuality.

In “Subway,” she stood in a Tokyo subway car dressed as if she just landed from outer space. She was dressed in a silver metallic costume with a headset, microphone and push buttons on her forearm. 

In “Empty Dream,” she manipulates a photo of a real public swimming place as she inserts herself in a blue plastic mermaid costume in several locations within the scene. This image refers to, among other things, the rising of technology and philosophy around the creation of man through biotechnology.

Some sub-works such as the “Wave-UFO,” a six-kg. dome where the visitor, once inside it, can see projected paintings reworked with computer graphics and then transformed into photographs in the interior dome of the Wave UFO. 

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