In
2010 Mariko Mori founded the charitable foundation FAOU with the
stated intention of creating “a series of six site-specific art
installations, spread across six unique ecological settings of the
six habitable continents on earth”, each work providing “lasting
testimony to the natural beauty of its surroundings.” One of those
site specific works, Ring,
is currently installed at the Royal Academy in Rebirth,
the artist's first solo show in London in 15 years. Another, Primal
Rhythm, is there in documentary
form.
When
it is complete Primal Rhythm
will be located in a bay off the coast of Okinawa in Japan; a
plexiglas column, Sun Pillar,
emerging from a rock cluster and a large Moonstone rising out of the
water shifting its colour according to the phases of the moon. At
the winter solstice - this year predicted by the Mayan calendar to
herald the end of the world and its rebirth - the sun
pillar
will cast a shadow over the water to intersect precisely with the
moonstone.
Ring
is a Lucite circle symbolising the eternal cycle of life. In the
Royal Academy exhibition it is suspended above an artificial
waterfall. How much more poetic and beautiful it will seem when it
finds its intended location, floating indefinitely over a waterfall
in Brazil. Man made of a synthetic material it will speak of and to
a world wherein humanity is one with nature, where human rhythms
coincide with those of the natural environment.
Wandering
around the exhibition at the Royal Academy the viewer is faced with
biomorphic shapes, with twinkly lights, with rocks and acrylic
objects in Stonehenge-esque formations and drawings in pastel
colours. In the texts we are confronted with words such as
'transcendence', 'consciousness' and 'universe'. It is not easy, in
the post-modern, post-internet western world to address such matters
without being perceived a crackpot. Through our defensive filters of
hardness and scepticism we could be wont to see all of this as
nothing more than mawkishness. Or as some sort of moral imperative
to 'save the world', a Christian style beration upon our heads for
not behaving more responsibly towards the planet. The paradoxical
nature of the universe seems to defy easy translation into words and
images and I am reminded of the warning of the Tao Te Ching: “the
Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”.
But
Mori is not a hokey space-cadet, nor is she engaged in the business
of telling us what we should
or shouldn't
be doing. Sitting opposite her in a quiet stately room at the Royal
Academy she exudes inimitable elegance and thoughtful, intuitive
grace. Born in Tokyo in 1967 she grew up in Japan. In 1989 she
moved to London to study at Chelsea College of Art. She now lives
and works in New York. The cultures, philosophies and theologies she
is most interested in and influenced by are those native to her,
those of her ancestors: Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. She is also
interested in science, cosmology and modern technology.
Discussing
the question of man's relationship to nature she tells me: “We are
nature. Our minds overestimate human power towards nature. There is
no good and bad, just the rhythm of the world. We can't control it.”
Speaking of the difficult ecological events in Japan over the last
two years she says: “It is sad to lose so many lives but at the
same time we are part of a whole.” These are not the words of a
mawkish sentimentalist. Not at all.
Written
for This is Tomorrow
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