The search for self has preoccupied mankind and inspired artists for centuries. While the subject too often lends itself to vapid visual and literary works, artist Fumino Hora has created a captivating installation in the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Galleries that is simultaneously universal fable and personal exploration.

The 10 modestly sized digital prints of "Harbinger" ring the entry gallery. The work's title sets expectations as the viewer follows a small figure through the mysterious passageways of an old, apparently abandoned building. Overhead diaphanous banners bearing a larger-than-life image of a woman turn in air currents from an unseen source while light similarly emanates from a place beyond vision.

The child/statue moves through the building, peering around corners, stopping to gaze up at an older male figure seated high on a wall, standing before a locked door. In the ninth image the child is placed between a crouching female figure in the background and a red dress and shoes carefully arranged upon the rough floor. In the last image, the child looks down at a dragonfly landed upon the floor, its gossamer wings stretched out above the concrete.

It is a tale of maturation, of seeking, of transcendence; adventurous, a little risque. The story is evident -- and it is not, because there is more.

Suspended from the gallery ceiling are seven of the flowing works that hung like figments over the child in the prints, photographic transfers on translucent silk panels. On a far wall, several large prints draw the viewer out of the narrative into more particular discovery. And in a nook off the gallery sit the diminutive statues, staring out at the viewer.

While each has a presence of its own, they are pieces to puzzle together to realize Hora's full intent.

The woman of the banners is Hora herself. While Japanese, she is wearing a traditional Chinese dress and feminine heeled shoes, and her hair is, in most instances, demurely pulled into a chignon. The dress is the same that lies lifeless on the floor near the end of "Harbinger," like a metamorphosed skin.

"After [having lived] in Hong Kong for 13 years," Hora says, "I was almost losing my own identity of being Japanese. That is the reason why the figures are wearing the Chinese cheong sam. Even a couple of the [statues -- the child and young woman] have Japanese dolls' faces while wearing the Chinese cheong sam."

The small figures, which Hora sculpted from plaster, are inspired by Dousojin, Japanese folk deities that are placed on rural roads at passes and borders "to protect villages, travelers, pilgrims in this world, and also travelers from this world to the next world."

As the viewer becomes aware of such symbolic layering, questions of identity arise -- of gender, role and nationality in an increasingly globalized world, perhaps of home.

Now take all of this and consider it within the title of Hora's exhibition, "Doppel Ganger" (which, with various numerical distinctions, is also the title she's assigned most of the other pieces in the larger show).

Doppelganger refers to a person's supposed double -- a ghostly, generally unseen and usually ominous alter ego.

Hora writes in her artist statement that while doppelganger is a German term, the notion exists in various cultures. "This other self is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and is a spirit that is bound by neither time nor space."

So, overlain with considerations of extricating the authentic self from that molded by society is the possible dilemma of the authentic self waging an internal battle with its resident other.

Hora initiates a complex conversation that she is nowhere near exhausting. But her approach is a welcome one in that it honors the subject by allowing that the search for self knowledge and fulfillment is not simple and indeed is probably a lifetime commitment. Along the way, in the best scenario, that realization will extend to aspects of life beyond the individual, to culture as a whole.

Other works exhibited achieve varying degrees of success but offer insight to the artist's range of experimentation and practice.

Hora has been in Pittsburgh only since October 2006 but is well-established in the arts community. Her photographic diptych "David" received the Donald and Sylvia Robinson Family Foundation Award at the 98th Annual Exhibition of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, which continues through Sept. 14 at The Andy Warhol Museum.

It's time to pack away the flip-flops and turn to stimulating fall programs. The PG's Fall Arts Guide comes out Sept. 11. In the meantime, keep in mind:

The 2008 Carnegie International, "Life on Mars," which brings in several exhibiting artists, starting with Thomas Hirschhorn at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Carnegie Museum of Art.

A symposium, "Changing World. Changing Styles. Art from an era that transformed America," will be Sept. 12 at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, in conjunction with the International-related exhibition "Painting in the United States."