Miwa Yanagi

Miwa Yanagi: Deutsche Bank Collection will open at the Chelsea Art Museum—Home of The Miotte Foundation in New York on May 4 and run through August 25, 2007. The first solo exhibition for this Japanese artist in the US will feature more than 30 photographs representing three unique bodies of work, and a new video work. After its presentation at Chelsea Art Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in February 2008.

Miwa Yanagi, who lives in Kyoto, Japan, was selected as Deutsche Bank’s 2004 Artist of the Business Year with an exhibition at Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin featuring her first two series, Elevator Girls and My Grandmothers. The newest works from the Fairy Tale series will be added and be on view together in New York for the first time.

The compelling photographs of Miwa Yanagi explore themes depicting the role of women in the context of Japanese society, yet reflect the archetypal concerns of many women across cultures. Mixing both the imaginary and the real, Yanagi conjures compelling visions using theatrical set-ups and mesmerizing color. Elevator Girls, started in 1993, first gained international attention for the artist, and My Grandmothers, begun in 1999, is based directly on conversations with the women who apply to be her models. The most recent Fairy Tale series, mainly shot in black and white, further examine female roles as they are mythologized in fairy tales specifically by the ancient Greeks, Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.

Dorothea Keeser, president and co-founder of the Chelsea Art Museum commented, "We are very pleased to be hosting the first American exhibition of Miwa Yanagi, whose powerful explorations of the mythology and iconography surrounding the portrayal of women are a potent addition to our programming. In addition, we are delighted to enter into this collaboration with Deutsche Bank."

“Supporting living contemporary artists through purchases, commissions and exhibition sponsorships has been a commitment by Deutsche Bank for over 25 years,” said Friedhelm Huette, Director and Curator, Deutsche Bank Art, Frankfurt. “We are thrilled to be able to bring to New York audiences for the first time an overview of work to date by this exceptional artist, including new works never before seen.”

About the Series

Elevator Girls For the Elevator Girls series, identically clothed female models pose within surrealistic architecture where anonymity and interchangeability echo their own psychic predicament. Featured in groups and in contrast to the cool, synthetic environments that surround them, the photographs present women themselves as display items as they gaze at architectural models and objects of consumer desire. According to Yanagi, Elevator Girls is about "myself and other Japanese women" who feel the kind of standardization that exists in modern Japanese society and elsewhere.

My Grandmothers In the ongoing My Grandmothers series, Miwa Yanagi creates a response to the youth of “Elevator Girls” by projecting the dreams of young women into the future 50 years forward. After talking with her collaborating models, the artist creates images depicting their personal visions of life in old age, accompanied by poetically evocative texts based on the conversations. The young models have been professionally altered by make-up and digital manipulation and, like all of Yanagi’s work, the images invite viewer interpretation.

Fairy Tales Yanagi’s latest series explore famous children’s stories, such as Rapunzel and Snow White, which deal with relationships between young girls and older women. These often disturbing narratives that have been passed down through European folk lore, are points of departure for the artist’s exploration of the underlying significance of the tales, ones which are often violent and cruel. Etched into our collective memories, but presented through the artist’s lens, the images examine and twist the mythologies further using masks, wigs, mixed race models and female children dressed as older women.

About the Artist Miwa Yanagi was born in Kobe, Japan in 1967 and completed her post graduate courses at Kyoto City University of Arts. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in museums worldwide, including Deutsche Guggenheim and Guggenheim Bilbao, the Ludwig Museum, Budapest and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan. More information at www.yanagimiwa.net.

Catalogue: Miwa Yanagi ­ Deutsche Bank Collection with texts by Ariane Grigoteit, Friedhelm Huette, Manon Slome, Anne Tucker, Peter Herbstreuth, Dominique Gonzalez-Forster, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chizuko Ueno In English, 80 pages

Miwa Yanagi
Deutsche Bank Collection