Contemporary art by emerging and renowned artists has been continually integrated into Deutsche Bank’s work environment since 1978. Today, nearly 50,000 works are on view in conference rooms, hallways, elevators, and reception areas from Frankfurt to New York to Singapore.

From May 4 through August 25, 2007, Deutsche Bank and the Chelsea Art Museum present the work of Japanese artist Miwa Yanagi in her first U.S. solo museum exhibit. Miwa Yanagi:  Deutsche Bank Collection features three distinguished bodies of work by this outstanding Japanese artist, made over a period of nearly fifteen years.

In 2004, Miwa Yanagi was selected as Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Business Year, a recognition annually awarded since 1980 to one artist from the collection.  That year, Miwa was invited to mount her first museum show at Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, featuring her first two series, “Elevator Girls” and “My Grandmothers.”  Photographs from that exhibition are now being shown together in this country for the very first time, with newer works from her extraordinary “Fairy Tale” series conveying the full evolution of Miwa’s work.

Miwa Yanagi’s stunning photographs explore themes related to the roles of women in Japanese society, yet they reflect archetypal concerns of women in general. Mixing fantasy and reality, Yanagi conjures compelling visions using theatrical staging and mesmerizing color.

According to Anne Tucker, Curator of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, “Yanagi has given considerable thought to the status of women and the complex history of feminism in Japan, and she embeds levels of meaning in her art relative to specific women’s issues in Japan. Therefore, Japanese audiences are likely to understand best the layers and subtleties of the first two series, but the worldwide exhibition and publication of Yanagi’s work proves that viewers from other cultures also find the pictures challenging and engaging.” See Anne Tucker’s essay – “Three Views / One Eye: Miwa Yanagi’s perceptions of women

According to Manon Slome, Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum, “Elevator girls are, by design, without their own identity, as neutral as the spaces they occupy…The highly artificial light of the images and locations further drain their faces of individuality, turning them into cosmetic masks…The girls symbolize consumerism…” See Manon Slome’s essay – “Where do you go to my lovely…?”

In the ongoing My Grandmothers series, Miwa Yanagi creates a response to the youth of “Elevator Girls” by projecting the dreams of young women into the future 50 years forward. After talking with her collaborating models, the artist creates images depicting their personal visions of life in old age, accompanied by poetically evocative texts based on the conversations. The young models have been professionally altered by make-up and digital manipulation and, like all of Yanagi’s work, the images invite viewer speculation on their interpretation.

Miwa Yanagi  Sleeping Beauty, 2004 From the series Fairy Tales, Gelatin Silver Print, Deutsche Bank Collection © Miwa Yanagi, Kyoto

Yanagi’s latest series explore famous children’s stories, such as Rapunzel and Snow White, which deal with relationships between young girls and older women.  These often disturbing narratives that have been passed down through European history are points of departure for the artist’s exploration of the underlying significance of the tales, which are often violent and cruel. Etched into our collective memories, but presented through the artist’s lens, the images examine and twist the mythologies further using masks, wigs, mixed race models and female children dressed as older women. 

Miwa Yanagi  Midnight Awakening Dream, 1999 From the series Elevator Girls
C-Print Deutsche Bank Collection © Miwa Yanagi, Kyoto


Miwa Yanagi  Looking For The Next Story I, 1996 From the series Elevator Girls
C-Print Deutsche Bank Collection © Miwa Yanagi, Kyoto