The biggest event on the capital's contemporary art circuit this week was undoubtedly the opening of Mariko Mori's "Pure Land" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. The fact that more than a few people were calling this exhibition a "retrospective" hints at how artspeak is changing, as the oldest work in the show dates back barely seven years.
But that was all the time it took for young Mori (her actual age has become a closely guarded family secret, but reports peg her at 34) to get where she is today. Only seven years to rise from being just another exponent of Japan's kosupure craze ("costume play" in which adolescents -- and adolescent adults -- use elaborate costumes and make up to transform themselves into manga and anime figures) to the realms of international art superstar.
Mori was perfectly positioned for success. The political-correctness wave that hit Western art in the 1980s swept away the idea that it was all right to organize museum and gallery shows around only white male artists. In the 1990s, curators actively sought out exotic personalities, such as Haitian-born graffiti painter Jean-Michel Basquiat.