Miwa Yanagi

Miwa Yanagi was born in 1967 Kobe City, Japan. She completed her postgraduate course work at the Kyoto City University of Arts (Yanagi). Miwa Yanagi is known mainly as a photographer and video artist. Miwa Yanagi creates an elaborate, thoroughly thought out, and often costly staged event using female models ranging in different ages. These female models may display ages quite different from their own in the photos. After the picture or video is taken, the image may or not be altered by a computer. If the computer is used, then a massive amount of time is spent working on the photo to alter the image in strange ways ( Bergquist ). The large amount of time spent working on the photo also insures that the final piece looks as realistic as possible, and the alterations that are merged with the actual images fit perfectly. The end result is a surrealistic image of everyday life.

Miwa Yanagi was influenced by a teacher in high school who was passionate for his art work. From seeing how passionate he was about his work, she decided to go into art and on to a university. Miwa Yanagi's 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 Miwa Yanagi works were exhibited along with other famous artists like Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. This gave her major opportunity over other Japanese artists because of the international exposure to a commercial art market. In Japan it is hard to be a contemporary modern artist. Many Japanese artists don't know how to sell their art or be financially successful. Information on how to be a contemporary artist in Japan is hard to come by. Not because there are not enough of them but because of a lack of a buyers market and no commercial galleries as seen in other countries like in American or Europe's. Because of lack of a contemporary art market in Japan and her success in Germany in 1996 she decided to display her work overseas (Wakasa ). Many of her photographs have models from Japan. In her later works however the some models have mixed ethnicities. Miwa Yanagi currently works and live in Kyoto, Japan.

In 1993 Miwa 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 ( anonymous 2). Some of her solo shows include her first show in 1993, in an exhibition in Art Space Niji, Kyoto, then later in the Deutsche Guggenheim and Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art and Harass Museum of Artin 2005, the Chelsea Art Museum in 2007, and most recently the The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 2008 ( Yanagi). Some group exhibitions included are “ART NOW ’94” Hyoho Prefectural Museum of Modern art, Hyogo 1994, Future recollections” Kyoto Municipal Museum of art, Kyoto, “Freeze” Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000, “Complicity, Biennale de Lyon 2001 Prelude to 2003” Lyon France 2001,and 2008 “Still Motion:liquid painting” Mie Prefectural Art museum ( The National Museum of Art Osake, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography) “Tsubaki Kai Ten” Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo ( Yanagi).