Surreal, futuristic, theatrical, contemporary, and beautifully nightmarish; these are all factors found in the works of Miwa Yanagi centered around women, physical appearances, age, and social restrictions that Japanese women (and women in general)faced as she grew up. Her artistic mediums combine theatrical cosmetics, dramatic stage settings, computer-generated scenes and synthetic photography which are genially transformed into remarkably realistic compositions. Huge in scale, these poetic narratives give insight of Yanagi’s childhood and culture through contradicting themes.

Yanagi was born in Kobe, Japan, and though her father was a successful businessman, she was an average child and led a life of commuting back and forth between an average Japanese high school and home. Her parents were cultured and traditional and wanted her to have a steady marriage with a promising job. She studied fine arts at the University of Kyoto of Arts but had no real intentions of becoming an artist. (Culture base) After she graduated, she took a job as a teacher and because of society’s expectations for a woman to act and dress a certain way it wasn’t long before she was inspired to start a piece called Elevator Girl. An elevator girl is a female guide whose job is to ride elevators greeting and escorting guest in malls and railways. Elevator Girl was originally a performance piece which was held in a Kyoto art gallery (1993) and featured a model that stood in a mock elevator, dressed in what was considered an elevator girl’s uniform, and performed the duties of her character; the bowing, the greetings, the gestures. Yanagi decided that she wanted more control of the concept and turned to photography. Elevator Girl then became Elevator Girls; a series of photographs that portrays a group of Japanese women dressed alike and stationed in futuristic architectural settings. The scale of some of these photographs are large, others are huge, measuring sixty feet in length.

These elevator girls, these attendants, charmingly crafted, are dressed in identical uniforms and make-up. They appear to be robotic in nature and lack human qualities. They are not dolls, not geisha, not housewives, not secretaries, not school girls in pleated skirts. They dress stylish in matching pumps; scarlet suits with gold buttons; navy suits with pale bows; and white suites with caramel hats – so identically dressed they lose self-identity. There is no emotion. They are distant but intriguing, not free but more or less than what they seem. One rests her head in white gloved hands, one naps in another’s lap, one sits, one stands, one kneels. They wait in elevators that lead to the levels of a department store; second floor food court, third floor art, fourth floor a wall lined with more elevator girls. They are quiet, opening doors to worlds made with loud, vibrant colors and mesmerizing scenes of glassless aquariums, and plastic gardens.

Miwa Yanagi
Elevator Girl – House b4 (1998)

These elevator girls, these guides, selfishly crafted by society, are representation to the restrictions and traditional, domestic roles of women all over the world. They are very much dolls and trophy wives, escorts and host. They are made pretty to look at, robotic in nature, because their only duty is to follow orders, to marry and raise children, to be limited to homely careers as housewives and mothers, people with voices but muted. The only doors they open leads to mechanical greetings, bow after bow, and passengers who all but acknowledge their existence.

Miwa Yanagi
Elevator Girl – White Casket (1994)

Take White Casket, a series of four photographs that features three women, dressed in crimson suits, that lie on the floor of a white elevator room. They are consumed by a thick red liquid (I read as blood) and they eventually become that liquid. They live as elevator girls and they will die as elevator girls as if this is the only thing they could ever, and will ever do in their lives.

More girls in white blazers and red skirts stand in a cramped space as they wait for their next customers (Before and After a Dream). Paradise Trespasser shows others clad in black suits, lounging around steel bunks with tan blankets that reach the ceiling. They wait until work starts because they have nothing better to do but dream of a better, more exciting life.

According to Miwa Yanagi, the photos of this series are about her and other Japanese women. “When I started the series, I was working as a teacher” she says. “I strongly felt that I was just playing a role in a standardized society, having a particular occupation in a particular setting. I did not work as an elevator girl literally, but the idea resonated in me in a symbolic way.” (Journal of Contemporary Art)

In 1996, a successful photographer by the name of Yasumasa Morimura saw Yanagi’s photographs, was impressed, and was able to get her work featured at the Shirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany. Her works were featured alongside artists such as Cindy Sherman. Following Elevator Girls, Yanagi completed a new series of collective images called My Grandmothers. For this project, she asked young women to describe what they wanted their future to look like fifty-sixty years in the future. Because of society, women were reluctant to express the way they wanted to live their lives. In order for them to live their childhood dreams, they need to “be liberated from their youthfulness.” From this feedback, she used make-up, dramatic settings and digital manipulation to create their visions.

While Elevator Girls tackles issues dealing with the restrictions forced on young women by social roles and expectations, My Grandmothers features the lives of mature women who were “freed” from those expectations – freed from the expectation of being beautiful, from living an unfulfilling life and the expectation to “behave.” These women are in control of their own dreams and their own lives, taken from their boring youthful settings and thrown in wild adventures in the future. Each photograph features a text, a sort of monologue to complement each grandmother’s story.

My Grandmothers – Yuka
2000; chromogenic print on Plexiglas on aluminum; 63 x 63 inches

Yuka is a seventy year-old grandmother who took a trip to L.A. and met her boyfriend, the play boy. She’s “turned down his repeated marriage proposals” but they look happy as they zoom across the Golden Gate Bridge on a motorcycle. The youthful boyfriend appears to be unaware of his girlfriend’s age. The grandmother Mineko looks peaceful as she flies a jet over the Indian Ocean. Another grandmother, Eriko, is a fashionista and super model with a young body but an aged face. She traveled the world – Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo – and “brought the masses” to their knees with her prowess and catwalks on the runway though her runway is a tombstone because even after she dies, she will be a legend. These are Yanagi’s ideal grandmothers.

My Grandmothers, Eriko, 2009

While Yanagi’s third series is just as astonishing as the previous two, it has no particular connection to the experiences of Japanese women. It does, though, have very distinctive elements that separate it from the earlier series but also connects them. Fairy Tale is a series based on classical European stories. Not the happily-ever-after, Disney versions but the violent, gruesome originals. Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Gretel, and Rapunzel all make an appearance but in very shocking environments. In some cases she re-creates the scenes from the stories as told, other times she rewrites the scene entirely. While both Elevator Girls and My Grandmothers involved bright, energetic colors, the Fairy Tale images are monochromatic. Yanagi also abandons the computer and uses dramatic, theatrical settings as well as mask and cosmetics to create these fantasy worlds. What’s more, her models for Fairy Tale feature little girls. One of the girls wears the face of an old hag (in which case is the evil stepmother or witch). But Yanagi makes no effort to disguise their youthful bodies.

Fairy Tale – Gretel　2004　Gelatin silver print

In Elevator Girls, the women were young and beautiful, but robotic and emotionless. In My Grandmothers, the women are elderly, adventurous, wise and unrestricted. Here, in Fairy Tale, the evil stepmothers and witches that seek to destroy the young girls in these classical tales find themselves facing rivals equally cruel. It’s a battle between young and old, innocence and self-loathing which implies that youth and old age are a contradiction – that inside every young girl is an old woman or the potential to become this evil, wicked hag and inside of every hag is the innocent young girl she once was struggling to find herself again. This ain’t a Cinderella story as Little Red embraces her grandmother in the gutted belly of the wolf or as Gretel bites (almost erotically) on the finger of the witch’s hand that reaches out to her through the bars of a dark cage. And so it becomes a battle of character. In Yanagi’s Sleeping Beauty, the young girl attacks the old witch with a spindle, definitely in no need of a prince charming. In this series, as Snow White hands herself the poisoned apple, Yanagi expresses that woman aren’t just battling society, but themselves.

Fairy Tale – Sleeping Beauty　2004　Gelatin silver print

Yanagi is expressly interested in the contradictions that women face; youth vs. old age, beauty vs. ugliness, innocence vs. wickedness. Other contradictions that she experiments with are reality and the imaginary, modern and futuristic, and also past and present. She calls Japan “a big grandma nation,” because women live longer than either sex in any other nation. Yet the country also has an almost obsessive adoration of little-girl worship, depicted hugely in anime (lolicon) and manga books. Old women and little girls, “The two extremes―what a contradiction, right?” she says. Her series, themselves, are contradictions. While Elevator Girls depicts young women existing as the fantasy of others, the series My Grandmothers depicts women catering to their own fantasies. She allows us a look in the future in an incredibly clever way that the present, and what it means to live in the present is significantly deepened.

Bibliography
“Culturebase.net.” 21 July 2003. The International Artist Database. 2 November 2011 .
Davis, Ben. “Globalized Feminism.” Artnet Magazine 23 October 2011.
Grooup, Deutche Bank. Cultural Collaborations. 18 May 2011. 2 November 2011 .
Guggenheim, Deutsche. Miwa Yanagi. 2004. 24 October 2011 .
Kariya, Sachiko. “Miwa Yanagi.” Journal of Contemporary Art (2001): 9.
Maerkle, Andrew. “Miwa Yanagi Makes the Personal Public.” Japan Times 19 June 2009: 2.
Miwa Yanagi. 2000-11. 23 October 2011 .
Yanagi, Miwa. Miwa Yanagi: My Grandmothers. 2000. 26 October 2011 .