Mari Katayama

This diptych comprises two large colour photographs that feature the artist Mari Katayama posed in her teenage bedroom in Gunma, Japan. Clothing and fabrics are hung from the walls and ceiling; personal possessions, including sewing equipment and materials, are densely stacked on various surfaces; and a life-size, heavily embroidered soft sculpture in the shape of a human body can be seen lying on the floor. Katayama wears different outfits and wigs in each image. In I’m Wearing Little High Heels she poses to focus the viewer’s attention on her prosthetic right leg and foot. In I Have Child’s Feet she sits on the floor with her pink-coloured prosthetic legs and feet raised up to rest on a frilly hand-embroidered cushion.

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.

Such artworks inform Katayama’s work as an activist and public speaker. Describing her motivation behind these works, Katayama recalled an incident involving a drunk customer at the bar in which she was working who told her that ‘a woman is no longer a woman when not wearing high-heels’. Upset by this comment and frustrated by the fact that high heels for wearers of prosthetic limbs were not readily available, she began to make her own. The work developed into her ‘High Heel Project’, in which she documents her process of making and wearing high heels with artificial legs. Katayama has written of the project:

In the field of social welfare, the importance of ‘clothing’ is not well recognized, even now. If there were clothes that a disabled person could wear and take off themselves, they may be able to go to the toilet or change their clothes without the help of other people, a factor previously required. Moreover, if the patient or a disabled person could choose their own clothing by their own tastes, clothing could become a big first step toward their social rehabilitation and increased independence. I could not ignore such an issue as this that I came to know and it prompted my project, ‘wearing high-heels with artificial legs’ … All my activities of being myself 193cm tall while wearing high heels have become the High Heels Project.

(Artist’s website, ‘About “High Heel Project”, http://shell-kashime.com/, accessed 15 January 2020.)

As a young child, Katayama was taught to sew by the three generations of women in her family, who made clothes especially for her since clothes for people who wear prosthetic limbs were not available ‘off the shelf’. Her artistic practice thus began with textiles – 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 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.

I’m Wearing Little High Heels and I Have Child’s Feet were displayed at Katayama’s graduate exhibition (Tokyo University of Arts, BankART Studio, 2012) alongside an installation of made and found objects and personal possessions that she arranged on the floor in the shape of a love heart. Seen together, the photographs and installation represent the significance of high heels to Katayama as an artist, woman and a wearer of prosthetic limbs.

The photographs are digital C-type prints on paper, housed in frames of the artist’s choosing. They exist in an edition of ten with two artist’s proofs, Tate’s copies being number three in the edition. They should always be shown together.

Further reading
Mari Katayama, Gift, Tokyo 2019.

Emma Lewis
January 2020