Mariko Mori is a Japanese artist best known for her sculptures, videos, photographs, installation, digital imagery, and performance pieces which often involve surreal or science fiction-like objects and imagery. In her videos and performances Mori appears costumed as a sexy cyborg, pop star, mermaid, futuristic goddess, as seen in her work Pure Land (1996-1998). The artist’s ability to meld her own image in a series of chameleon-like reinventions relates her work to the photographic practice of Cindy Sherman. “I am interested in circulating past iconography in the present in order to get to the future,” she has said of her work. Born in 1967 in Tokyo, Japan, Mori studied at Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo while also working as a fashion model. The artist went on to study at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, before attending the Whitney Museum of Art’s Independent Study program in New York. Today, Mori’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris among others.