Mari Katayama

bystander #23 is a performative self-portrait made by the artist from the wider series bystander, which comprises twenty-four works in total. bystander #14 is also in Tate’s collection (Tate P82669). In these photographs Katayama is wearing a soft sculpture of her own design comprised of stuffed textile arms in various flesh colours. Some represent Katayama’s own hands and arms, others those of villagers in the community in which she made the work. All are stitched with small pearls and decorated with white lace. In bystander #23 Katayama is shown close up, seated on soft furnishings. The sculpture is draped around her shoulders and torso, and her legs are bare. In bystander #14 Katayama appears to wear this sculpture as a skirt, as she lays on the beach. A large soft sculpture of her legs is just behind her and the sea is in the background.

Katayama’s work takes as its starting point her experiences of being born with the developmental condition congenital tibial hemimelia and of living as an amputee: at the age of nine, she elected to have both legs amputated. She seeks not to simply illustrate the physical appearance of her disability, but to fabricate a space in which to reflect on specific experiences of stigmatisation and vulnerability. In doing so, she challenges common misconceptions and assumptions around physical disability. With adaptive clothing not readily available, Katayama’s clothes were made by the three generations of women in her family who also taught her to sew. As an artist, textiles were initially her primary medium – embroidered soft sculptures featuring crystals, printed images, lace, shells and hair – and she initially took photographs as a means of sharing these textile works with her friends on the social media platform MySpace. These photographs have subsequently become of equal importance within her practice. They often feature the soft sculptures or textiles, and they are sometimes displayed alongside the sculptures themselves.

Katayama’s earlier series High Heel Project – in which she posed in her bedroom amongst her sewing materials and soft sculptures – grew out of her project to design and manufacture high heels for wearers of prosthetic legs (see, for example, the diptych I’m wearing little high heels, I have child’s feet 2011 [Tate P15466]). The series represents the first time she included herself in her photographs. Bystander followed and this time Katayama focused not on her legs or feet, but on her hands.

She has explained:

the bystander series (2016) was made during my stay in Naoshima Island. I featured the hands of local residents as material – using textile with printed photographs of their hands, sewn on to the objects. These are the hands of onna-bunraku, a team of female kuroko (puppeteers of bunraku dolls all cloaked in black cloth, including their face). Their hands become the feet and spine of the dolls, which give all life to the dolls. ‘Kuroko must erase their existence,’ they say of themselves.

(Unpublished artist’s statement, 14 February 2020.)

Katayama added that this was the first time that other people’s bodies appeared in her work. Needing time to come to terms with this, she placed the sculptures in a rucksack and made a long journey around Naoshima to photograph herself. She later photographed herself with the sculptures in her studio. She has equated this psychological and physical discomfort with that of getting used to a new prosthesis, adding: ‘My work was made from my life, which then contributes to my work in return. There’s this kind of exchange and circulation between my work and myself.’ (Unpublished artist’s statement, 14 February 2020.)

Photographs and installations from the bystander series 2016 were included in the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2019 alongside other series of photographs by the artist. Tate’s prints are number one of two artist’s proofs aside from the edition of five.

Further reading
Mari Katayama, Gift, Tokyo 2019.

Emma Lewis
October 2020