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Miwa Yanagi was born in 1967 in Kobe, Japan. She is currently 53 years old and is still an active photographer. Yanagi’s work examines self-image and stereotypes of women in contemporary Japanese society. Yanagi’s career came unexpectedly in 1996 when conceptual Photographer Yasumasa Morimura asked to use her home in Kyoto as a set. He came across her photography and she was invited to a debut in Germany. Yanagi showed in an international presentation alongside Nobuyoshi Araki, Miyako Ishiuchi, Cindy Sherman, Sam-Taylor Wood and Jeff Wall. Since then Yanagi’s rag to riches story has led her to group shows, including the Brooklyn Museum’s “Global Feminisms”, the Deutsche Bank Collection and her solo exhibition at the Chelsea Art Museum.

After majoring in crafts at university, Yanagi won attention with a series of composite photograph works titled “elevator girls”  My Grandmothers, a photograph series creating visual portrayals of young women who take on the role of themselves 50 years from now and Fairy Tale, in which young women take on the roles of girls and old women in fairy tale settings, making use of special effects in photographic images that deal with the subjects of gender, aging, life and death and oppressed personalities.

The three series on view are quite distinct. What holds them together is a feminist sensibility. Anne Tucker’s thesis in the show catalogue is that "Miwa Yanagi has fabricated three distinct series that confront and disrupt traditional perceptions of women." To make this statement mean anything, it’s worth getting an idea of what, specifically, Yanagi’s feminism disrupts, and who it represents.https://performingarts.jp/E/art_interview/1307/1.html