Questions of Cultural Identity and Difference in the work of Yasumasa Morimura, Mariko Mori and Takashi Murakami

dc.contributor.authorKhan, David Michaelen
dc.date.accessioned2008-09-07T21:11:26Z
dc.date.available2008-09-07T21:11:26Z
dc.date.issued2007en
dc.description.abstractThis thesis explores the work of three contemporary Japanese artists - Yasumasa Morimura, Mariko Mori and Takashi Murakami - in relation to cross-cultural exchanges and differences between Japan and the West. In carrying out such an investigation, this study illustrates how these artists play with Japanese and Western cultural forms in the context of postmodern challenges to concepts of essence and authenticity, and in a technologically transformed world shaped by unprecedented global flows of information, people, products and capital. In Morimura's art-making, this play is characterized by appropriations and parodies of Western cultural icons. The idea of identity-as-essence is superseded by a vision of identity-as-performance - a conception of identity as a creative act, taking place within an immanent system of global exchanges. Whilst Morimura's work tends to reify difference, for Mori the opposite is true. Melding arcane scientific and religious ideas, Mori creates technological spectacles with which she fantasizes a vanishing of determinate identities and difference within the encompassing field of a culturally amorphous techno-holism. Murakami's 'superflat' art raises the possibility of resolving this tension between the reification and effacing of difference. In his work, 'Japan' and 'the West' are represented as discrete entities that, at the same time, emerge already entangled, as effects in a preexisting system of global exchanges.en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10092/973
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.26021/4504
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherUniversity of Canterbury. Fine Artsen
dc.relation.isreferencedbyNZCUen
dc.rightsCopyright David Michael Khanen
dc.rights.urihttps://canterbury.libguides.com/rights/thesesen
dc.subjectCultureen
dc.subjectidentityen
dc.subjectdifferenceen
dc.subjectJapanen
dc.subjectMorimuraen
dc.subjectMorien
dc.subjectMurakamien
dc.titleQuestions of Cultural Identity and Difference in the work of Yasumasa Morimura, Mariko Mori and Takashi Murakamien
dc.typeTheses / Dissertations
thesis.degree.disciplineArt Historyen
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Canterburyen
thesis.degree.levelMastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Artsen
uc.bibnumber1064306en
uc.collegeFaculty of Artsen
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
thesis_fulltext.pdf
Size:
48.34 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format