Elevator Girl House B4

Photograph

DePaul Art Museum

Name/Title

Entry/Object ID

2022.22

Description

Six women in red suits and black hats seated in an underwater structure.

Context

Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi originally worked in fiber, installation, and performance before producing the photographic and video works for which she is now best known. Yanagi’s important series "Elevator Girls" was an outgrowth of her performance practice, which began as investigation of labor and the place of women in Japanese society. Fascinated by elevator operators, Yanagi staged performers wearing elevator operator uniforms in small spaces where they would smile artificially at viewers. Shortly thereafter, Yanagi switched to photography so she could “control their [the models’] performance 100 percent. As a result, they became mannequins.” In this way, both the subjects depicted and the process by which the images are produced gesture towards Yanagi’s artistic and political concerns, namely, the standardization of life under capitalism and the patriarchal control that still exerts a strong hold over Japanese women. In Elevator Girl House B4, Yanagi’s models—dressed in the traditional elevator operator’s attire—are shown underwater with blank, expressionless faces lying about or gazing at what lies beyond their current confinement. Though the photograph’s title suggests the figures are in a house, the surroundings suggest the figures are in an artificial body of water in the middle of a large shopping mall, surrounded by storefronts, and thus imprisoned in a scene of idle consumption. This would be the first work by Yanagi to enter DPAM’s collection but would nicely compliment strong photography holdings by other Japanese photographers such as Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Additionally, Yanagi’s work would complement a small but growing subset of feminist works by Asian artists.

Acquisition

Accession

2022.21-22

Source or Donor

Barbara Ruben

Acquisition Method

Gift

Credit Line

Gift of Barbara and Thomas Ruben

Made/Created

Artist

Yanagi, Miwa

Date made

1998

Dimensions

Dimension Description

Framed

Height

35-1/2 in

Width

42-1/2 in

Depth

1 in

Exhibition

Life Cycles

Interpretative Labels

Label

Elevator Girl House B4, 1998 Chromogenic print Collection of DePaul Art Museum, gift of Barbara and Thomas Ruben, 2022.22 Miwa Yanagi’s Elevator Girls series developed from an earlier performance piece where the artist reenacted the monotonous everyday tasks of elevator attendants in Japanese department stores. Hired for their beauty and clad in identical uniforms, elevator girls were fixtures of life in twentieth century Japan still marked by strict patriarchal expectations for women. In Elevator Girl House B4, Yanagi’s repetition of human figures who appear trapped in the elevator and floating in a strange underwater limbo suggests the erasure of identity in a homogeneous capitalist world. Miwa Yanagi (n. 1967) Chica del elevador casa B4, 1998 Impresión cromogénica Colección del Museo de Arte DePaul, donada por Barbara y Thomas Ruben, 2022.22 La serie Chicas del Elevador de Miwa Yanagi surgió de una performance previa en que la artista recreó las monótonas tareas cotidianas de las elevadoristas en las tiendas departamentales de Japón. Contratadas por su belleza y ataviadas con uniformes idénticos, las elevadoristas fueron elementos fijos de la vida del siglo xx en un Japón marcado aún por las expectativas patriarcales de las mujeres. En Chica del elevador casa B4, la repetición que hace Yanagi de figuras humanas que parecieran estar atrapadas en el elevador y flotar en un extraño limbo acuático sugiere el borrado de la identidad en un mundo capitalista homogéneo.