The exhibition title, All That Shines, symbolizes the “light” at the heart of Mariko Mori’s practice. Situating spiritual inquiry within astrophysical and temporal frameworks, works such as Tom Na H-iu, 2006, which render neutrinos emitted by supernova explosions perceptible as flashes of light, and the outdoor installations Primal Rhythm: Sun Pillar, 2011 and Ring: One with Nature, 2016, which are aligned with the sun at the winter solstice, demonstrate Mori’s conceptual approach. Structured as an immersive passage through three decades of artistic practice, Mariko Mori: All That Shines offers a space for introspection, play and wonder in an age defined by technological acceleration and planetary precarity.
Sean Kelly is delighted to announce Mariko Mori: All That Shines, the artist’s first major retrospective in Japan since Mariko Mori: Pure Land, 2002, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Organized by the Mori Art Museum, the exhibition is co-curated by Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation and Kataoka Mami, Director, Mori Art Museum. The show features some forty works spanning more than three decades and surveys Mori's artistic and conceptual innovations across all her signature media: performance-based and computer-imaging photography and video; drawing; sculpture and large-scale interactive installations.
All That Shines offers new frameworks for Mori's practice, positioning it within the fields of technological futurism, popular visual culture, and philosophies of consciousness. At a moment when the global contemporary art world is turning with renewed attention to the diversity of cultures and civilizations, artistic practices deeply intertwined with indigenous traditions and ceremonial life are once again coming to the fore. Simultaneously, the rapid evolution of technology is profoundly reshaping the very nature of creative expression It is within this context that a comprehensive survey of Mariko Mori's practice becomes not only timely, but urgent.
“I began searching for answers about the destination of the soul once it leaves the body.” - Mariko Mori
In the mid-1990s, Mariko Mori rose to prominence as a defining figure of the era, captivating the art world with her "Cyborg" series of performance-based photography and video works, as well as sci-fi-inspired imagery utilizing advanced computer graphics. Since then, her focus has expanded from critical perspectives on contemporary society-addressing themes like Japanese animé culture, gender, and post-humanism-toward larger metaphysical concerns, largely informed by Buddhist concepts of life, death, and the cosmos.
This evolution led to the development of large-scale interactive installations, which evoke the Buddhist realms of Nirvana and the Pure Land. As divisions in the global world order deepened at the turn of the 21st century, "Oneness" — a concept advocating for the interconnectedness of all life across time and space, from deep geological time to the infinite universe- became increasingly central to her practice.
Grounded in research and collaboration with scholars and scientists around the world, her work explores a variety of subjects, including animism, prehistoric cultures of the Jömon and Celtic periods, Buddhist Yogacara (consciousness-only) philosophy, elementary particle theory, and astrophysics. As exemplified by Wave UFO, 1999-2002, the first artwork ever to use brainwave bio-feedback, she has consistently harnessed cutting-edge technology to manifest these diverse inquiries into tangible, immersive experiences.
In 2010, Mori established the Faou Foundation with the mission of permanently installing artworks that encourage a reconnection between nature and humanity, a vision she has realized in Miyakojima and Rio de Janeiro.
“Recognizing our interconnection is not merely philosophical, but materially consequential for our collective future.” - Mariko Mori