The Soul Never Dies
Limited edition artist’s book
Juxta Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Soul Never Dies by Mariko Mori. The Soul Never Dies is a limited edition artist’s book commissioned by Juxta Press’ Afterlife series. Afterlife includes published and upcoming works by Ettore Spalletti, Kiki Smith, Seton Smith, Gary Hill, Giovanni Anselmo, John Divola, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Haim Steinbach, and Victor Burgin.
“I felt that this light was the source of everything. At any moment, it reaches in wherever a life is, and the darkness disappears at once. It gives a delightful blessing not just to this world, but to every dimension, to every possible world.”
The Soul Never Dies interweaves a series of mixed media drawings, which Mariko Mori made over a period of fourteen years, with an intimate text on life, death, and compassion. The drawings were created in Okinawa. On Seven Light Bay in Miyako Island in Okinawa, the artist has installed Sun Pillar (a pillar that casts a ceremonial shadow across the water onto Moon Stone during the winter solstice) of Primal Rhythm, an astronomical work in two parts. The second part of the installation and a forthcoming work, Moon Stone is a sphere that shifts colour according to the tide. Mariko Mori made 333 editions of The Soul Never Dies, which has numerical significance for the artist as it was inspired by the 33 transformations undergone by Bodhisattvas to attain salvation.
Limited edition of 333
Signed and numbered by the artist
23 x 31.5 x 4 cm
Printed in Italy
This edition will be released in tandem with a special edition of 13 books, all containing an original ink and pencil drawing by the artist.
The book will launch at the 4th edition of Oggetto Libro in Milan on December 1–31, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.
Mariko Mori is a multidisciplinary artist. Her practice explores universal questions at the intersection of life, death, reality, and technology. Mori’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others. Mori has received various awards, including the prestigious Menzione d’onore at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 (for Nirvana) and the 8th Annual Award as a promising Artist and Scholar in the Field of Contemporary Japanese Art in 2001 from the Japan Cultural Arts Foundation. In 2010, Mariko Mori started the Faou Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating six site-specific artworks engaging unique ecological settings, local communities and collaborators on each of the Earth’s habitable continents.
