Mari Katayama
Early life. Katayama was born 1987 in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. She later moved to Gunma Prefecture, where she grew up. She was born with congenital tibial hemimelia, which caused her to have club feet and a cleft left hand. As a result, she learned to sew at an early age to make clothes that accommodated her leg braces. At the age of 9, she opted to have her legs amputated and learned to walk with prosthetic legs. Katayama began styling photographs of herself with her sculptures and posting them online on her Myspace page in high school. When  starting out, she had her younger sister take photos of her. As a teenager, she was inspired to begin drawing on her prosthetics after modeling in a show for fashion designer Tatsuya Shimada, who discovered her through her blog. Shimada said that he was looking for a unique model, and he saw Katayama as a "real girl who loves fashion" and thought there was potential for drawing on her prosthetics. Katayama ended up lengthening her prosthetics for the show, bringing her total height to . Later, she would create high heels for her prosthetics as well. Education. Katayama graduated with a  B.A from the Department of Aesthetics and Art History, Faculty of Literature at Gunma Prefectural Women's University in 2010. She also studied at Tokyo University of the Arts, where she was mentored by the late Japanese curator Takashi Azumaya. With Azumaya's encouragement, she began to work as an artist. She graduated with a master's degree in 2012. Themes. When describing her work Katayama writes,"Who am I? This has always been a non-trivial question. Born with various developmental challenges, I had both legs amputated at the age of nine, and have since lived with prosthetics. The dolls  and prosthetic legs that appear repeatedly in my work can be an attempt to objectify my own elusive body through the acts of measuring, disassembling, and re-joining. The objects that fill the safety zone that is my room give it the aspect of an armory." Career. Solo exhibitions. Her first solo exhibition was titled "you're mine" and was shown at the Traumaris gallery in Ebisu in 2014. The collection of self-portraits was inspired by studying her own body and her experience being an amputee. A retrospective of her work, titled "19872017," was shown at Gateau Festa Harada , a candy factory and gallery, in 2017. Her show "On the Way Home," which consisted of all new work, also took place in 2017 at The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma. In 2019, she had her first UK solo show (titled "Broken Heart") at White Rainbow, a gallery in London that focuses on contemporary Japanese artists. In 2021, she presents several works, including her series "In the Water" at Maison Européenne de la Photographie in France. First solo exhibition in the United States. From October 2019 to January 2020, Katayama displayed her photography, as well as a textile piece made  of twine, pillows, pantyhose, seashells, and her own hair, at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. She met with students, as well as spoke through an interpreter as part of the Penny Stamps Speaker Series. Her photographs for the show captured her in indoor and outdoor environments to "explore her identity by objectifying her body in her art". It was her first solo exhibition in the United States. Group exhibitions. Katayama's work has been shown in multiple group exhibitions, starting with the Gunma Biennale for Young Artists in 2005 when she was 18 years old. Her first major  arts fair appearance was at the Aichi Triennale 2013, Aichi Arts Center Nagoya. Her mixed media installation included found objects, dried flowers, prosthetics, apothecary jars, and photographs, among others. In 2016, photographs from "you're mine" were included in "Roppongi Crossing 2016: " at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Her portrait for the exhibition, the theme of which was the human body and gender, featured her in lingerie without her prosthetics. The following year, Katayama presented new works created after the birth of her daughter in "Photographs of Innocence and of Experience – Contemporary Japanese Photography vol.14" at the Tokyo Photographic Art  Museum. In 2019, Katayama's work was featured in both the Arsenal and Central Pavilion exhibiting areas of the 58th Venice Biennale, an international art exhibition in Venice, Italy. Her work was also presented by Sage Gallery booth at Paris Photo later that year. Permanent collections. A copy of Katayama's 2016 photograph "Shadow puppet #007" is in the permanent collection of Princeton University Art Museum. Reception. A review on Artsy by Alina Cohen commended her repurposing of traditional craft objects, and cinematic, glamorous imagery. Simon Baker of Tate Modern praised her use of "ideas about identity and performance" without  being derivative. She won the Higashikawa New Photographer Award in 2019 and the 45th Kimura Ihei Award in 2020. Personal life. Katayama is married and has one daughter, born in 2017. She lives in Gunma.