Neurotechnology, data from a neutrino observatory, Buddhist philosophy and ancient ideas about nature become the material of Mariko Mori's art. Her major retrospective in Tokyo brings together around 40 works spanning three decades and reveals an artistic quest in which technology helps people feel themselves to be part of a far greater world.
“I don't believe that everything is limited to what we see,” says Mariko Mori.
This idea runs through more than three decades of her work. The Japanese artist turns to what usually remains beyond direct perception: the connections between consciousness, the body, nature and cosmic processes. In her works, digital technology, scientific research and spiritual traditions become different ways of approaching the invisible.
On 31 October 2026, at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo the exhibition opened Mariko Mori: All That Shines. This is the artist's first major retrospective in Japan after the exhibition Pure Land at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2002. The exhibition brings together around 40 works created over more than 30 years and is organised by Mori Art Museum together with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Art that goes beyond the museum
The scale of Mori's artistic quest is revealed not only in museum halls. In 2010 she founded the Faou Foundation in order to create permanent public works of art in unique natural locations around the world. The project is conceived as a series of six site-specific installations — one on each of the six inhabited continents. An important part of the concept is interaction with local communities and attention to the natural and cultural heritage of each place.
The first two works appeared on Miyako Island in Japan and in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Primal Rhythm: Sun Pillar (2011) — a light column on a coastal rock, connected with the movement of the sun and the winter solstice. Ring: One with Nature (2016) — a sculpture by the Véu da Noiva waterfall, whose colour changes from blue to gold under the influence of sunlight. The third work of the project, Peace Crystal (2016–2024), was presented in Venice in 2024; it is subsequently planned to be handed over to Ethiopia for permanent installation.
From the cyber image to unity
In the mid-1990s, Mori drew the attention of the art world with a series Cyborg (1994–1995) and the work Birth of a Star (1995). She combined elements of Japanese anime culture, video games, cosplay and fashion with digital images in which she herself appeared in the guises of a heroine of the future. These works explored the mutability of identity and the boundaries between human and technology.
Gradually the artist's interest shifted from images of contemporary urban culture to larger questions — about consciousness, life and death, the nature of existence. Buddhist cosmology, ancient ideas about the world and scientific research entered her practice.
One of the key works of this period was the interactive installation Wave UFO (1999–2002). The visitor lies down inside a large capsule-shaped structure and puts on a special headset that reads brain activity. Images responding to brain waves appear on a dome-shaped screen, and then the video Connected Worldis shown. In this way the internal processes of the body become part of a visual experience, and the viewer becomes a participant in the work. At the exhibition in Tokyo it is possible to undergo this experience, though the number of places is limited.
When invisible processes become an image
In the work Tom Na H-iu (2006), Mori turns to phenomena that cannot be seen with the naked eye. The sculpture is connected to data from the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory at the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research of the University of Tokyo. It responds to neutrinos arising, among other things, from processes on the Sun, in the Earth's atmosphere and in distant stellar explosions. These data are converted into flashes of light, making invisible cosmic events part of an artistic experience.
The title Tom Na H-iu refers to an ancient Celtic word denoting the otherworld. In this work, scientific data and ancient ideas about existence after death meet not as mutually exclusive explanations but as different ways of making sense of what lies beyond human perception.
When the invisible becomes an inner light
Behind Mori's interest in space, ancient cultures and new technologies lies a personal question. After the death of her father, when the artist was just over twenty, she began to wonder whether human existence really ends with death. In search of an answer she turned to Buddhism and astrophysics, visited ancient sacred sites and collaborated with scientists and engineers, developing technologies that could allow a person to feel a connection with the Universe.
In her address to the exhibition, Mori formulates an idea that has become one of the keys to understanding her work:
“In my practice I gradually came to the thought that if something like a soul exists, perhaps it is light — a part of a larger existence.”
Four chapters of a single investigation
The exposition is arranged chronologically and divided into four parts: Birth of a Star (“Birth of a Star”), Connected World (“Connected World”), Primal Memory (“Primal Memory”) and One with Nature (“One with Nature”). Together they show how Mori's artistic language changed and how the range of her questions gradually expanded — from the image of the human being in a technological society to the interconnection of all forms of life.
The final section is devoted to the projects of the Faou Foundation and includes a new video installation All That Shines (2026). On a large LED screen are shown views of places connected with the artist's works: Primal Rhythm: Sun Pillar, Ring: One with Nature and the ocean by her studio Yuputira on the island of Miyako. This is not a live broadcast but a video that connects the space of the museum with the natural landscapes beyond it.
The title of the exhibition — All That Shines (“All That Shines”) can be read more broadly than as merely a reference to the light effects in the works. For Mori, light becomes an image of what connects different forms of existence and allows one to sense the presence of the invisible. Her art does not attempt to explain the structure of the Universe. It offers, for a moment, to step beyond the habitual gaze and to feel oneself part of a world in which the human being, nature and the cosmos do not exist in isolation from one another.
