The Travels of Mariko Horo
(3D virtual reality installation)

Sometime between the 12th and the 22nd centuries a woman journeys westward from Japan, travelling through space and time, searching for the “Isles of the Blest,” the Buddhist paradise said to float in the Western Seas. Mariko Horo (Mariko the Wanderer) encapsulates her impressions of the places she sees in her travels in a series of “Horo-grams” 3D virtual worlds, that she invites people to explore, in a 3D installation.
Mariko Horo is a fictitious character and her journey is an inversion of the “Marco Polo Syndrome.” The 13th century Venetian traveller has long represented the exoticizing gaze that looks from Europe into the depths of Asia, the Western Man exploring, categorizing and analyzing the exotic cultures of the East. In reality however, he sees images of his own culture superimposed over a vague and exotic background. I wish to reverse this gaze, to invert the mirror.

The audience will never actually see Mariko - except perhaps in a mirror, since they look at the exotic and mysterious Occident from her perspective, through her eyes and her experiences.