Video Work
“Vanity” was created for Inspired by China, an exhibition organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and curated by Dr. Nancy Berliner and Dr. Edward Cooke.
The work incorporates a video filmed during Wendy Maruyama’s winter residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 2006. The subject of the video is Karen Maruyama, a Los Angeles–based actress, writer, and director. Viewed through a two-way mirror, the image gradually fades in and out, transforming the reflective surface into a shifting psychological and cultural space.
Within the video, the figure repeatedly applies eye makeup, alternating between emphasizing the slant of her eyes and attempting to make them appear rounder. The gesture quietly references the pressures of cultural assimilation, beauty standards, racial identity, and self-perception, while the mirror itself becomes both barrier and threshold—reflecting the instability between how identity is constructed, performed, and seen.
Photography by Dean Powell.
