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80068mimiwang · 4 years

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Mari Katayama – the gift of a universal body

Mari Katayama was born with tibial hemimelia and, at the age of 9, chose to have her legs amputated. She uses many handmade objets d’art in her art, many of which are modelled after various body parts.

Artist Mari Katayama has stunned viewers all over the world with her freshly unique and bold cross-media works, appearing in shows such as the Aichi Triennale 2013 and Roppongi Crossing 2016. Her mark on the modern art world earnt her a nomination for the Ihei Kimura Award in 2018. She exhibited an experimental body of work curated by artistic director Ralph Rugoff at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and won the Newcomer’s Award at the 35th Higashikawa International Photo Festival. Katayama has also announced, for this spring, a collection of her work thus far presented in a photobook, “GIFT”. Today, we have to opportunity to listen to her speak candidly about facing her circumstances head-on, and her idea of a universal body.

—What does your new photobook mean to you?

Katayama: If my life so far were a sentence, this book would be its full stop. It’s a nice way round up all the work I’ve done during this time. (laughs)

—I hear that the title, “GIFT” has a double meaning. Could you tell us more about that?

Katayama: There’s one work in particular that’s symbolic of this title, and it’s this heart-shaped objet d’art into which I’ve incorporated photographs of fingers. I printed photos of husband’s and my fingers onto fabric and made this objet d’art in the three months after giving birth. I think every woman who has experienced pregnancy realises that nothing is what it seems. Before we have a child, we just let the days go by without questioning the way that it is but now that there’s a child with us we have to look after it and worry for it.

During the pregnancy, it was fine if the baby didn’t have any fingers or feet. That’s just how things are, you know. But after I gave birth, I just had to check with the doctor straight away. I asked, “Does my baby have her fingers and feet?” I wanted my child to be born in perfectly good health, and part of me couldn’t stop worrying and thinking “but what if?” If worst came to worst, I’d want to have something to give to my daughter. Everyone is missing something, you know, but if my daughter felt bad for it I’d want her to know that she has the power to make up for whatever it is. I put all of those feelings that I felt as a parent into this objet d’art when I was making it.

However, after the exhibition I was showing it in ended, I looked at it with a new, calmer mindset. I thought to myself, “What would she even do with this?!” (laughs) She’d probably come to me all confused like, “Mum, what do I do with this?” It reminded me of how “gift” can also mean “poison” in German. Because poison is something you get given. It’s such a German way of thinking. The “gift” that I give my daughter for her sake might not even be to her liking. Realising that was a bit of a hard pill to swallow, so that’s why I chose “GIFT” as the title for my photobook.

—So with “GIFT” is the theme running throughout the book. Look back on your past work, what do you feel is particularly “gift”-like about it?

Katayama: As I am now, I no longer think of my past work as my cute little darlings like I did in the past. Although I am still the same human being, I feel that past me and present me are separate entities. Those works from my past self could even be “poison” to my present self. I’m sure my past self meant for those works to be a gift to my present self, but right now she finds them quite troublesome. (laughs) I am trying to accept them as best as I can, however.

—You have such a diverse way of realising your ideas in your art. Is photography particularly special to you?

Katayama: No, not particularly. All the work I’ve done so far were installations that incorporated both objets d’art and photography. Now that I’m releasing a photobook, the people who know what I do like to joke “oh, so you’re a photographer now, huh?” (laughs) I never had any professionals watch over me and teach me crafting or photography. I had some help getting my start but most of it has been self-taught. I also sing chanson sometimes, but even that I learnt from a jazz bar I used to work at. So photography isn’t particularly special to me or anything. I never introduce myself as a photographer, but “Hi, I’m an artist who dabbles in a lot of stuff” is too long.

—Could you tell us about how you got into making objets d’art?

Katayama: I think a big part of it can be attributed to my family members, who I’ve watched sew all my life. My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all sewed. I was clubfooted until the age of 9 so I couldn’t wear any ready-made children’s clothes, and my mother dressed me with her own clothes that she had altered to fit me. I used to always watch her alter these clothes and naturally I grew to want to sew, too. And still do now, of course, but I don’t think my mother likes my work very much. She’s always fussing over how rough and unprofessional the finishing is. (laughs)

—What made you want to release a photobook?

Katayama: For my installation at Roppongi Crossing 2016, I displayed every single objet d’art that I had. And because I did that, I feel like I was able to more wholeheartedly dedicate myself to photography. I then made three series of photographic works, found out I was pregnant, and my workflow and pace started to change and I was able to have more time to myself. I also started to wonder about the works I had let go of and what would become of them, and at that time someone mentioned something about a photobook. I thought that it would be a great chance for me to put them all together in one place and send them out on a new journey into the world.

—And you’ve got the works organised by the year they were made in, right?

Katayama: My oldest work was from when I was still in university. It was just a self portrait and I never really thought of it as a work of art back then.

I also used to draw and make objets d’art a lot back in high school, but I didn’t really think much of it back then. I started to want to show it to other people so I started uploading pictures of them onto social media like Myspace and Mixi. Shortly after, a stylist called Tatsuya Shimada asked if I would model in a fashion show with him. I accepted and had these drawing done on my artificial leg for that show. I was also encouraged to enter the Gunma Youth Biennale, and I also won an award there. I thought that just photographing my artificial leg by itself would be sort of confusing for viewers so I tried to take photos with it on, in a way that would explain to viewers what it was at the same time, and I ended up with these self portraits.

—Oh wow! So your start in photography was through social media? So you would’ve started using it around 2005. That’s quite early.

Katayama: My dad works in data processing so I got to familiarise myself with the internet quite early on. I made my first website using HTML when I was 15, and I still use it. That’s why it looks kind of outdated. (laughs) I went to a commercial high school because I wanted to get into IT. I never thought I would end up going to art school and becoming an artist.

—When did you start consciously taking self-portraits?

Katayama: To be honest, I still don’t call those photos self-portraits. It feels just as weird as calling myself a photographer, because the person in those portraits isn’t me. I just happen to be the only model that will do whatever I say and pose in the exact way I want.

Communicating with someone that isn’t me will always require verbal communication, and no matter how much understanding we can mutually reach it will never be exactly as I want. There’s always going to be a gap between what I want and how the model interprets it. The only time I became aware that I was taking a self portrait was when I was taking pictures of myself when I was pregnant, because that was when I specifically wanted to leave a photographic record of how I was in that moment.

—After your 2014 work you’re mine, you started to move from photographing inside your own house to outdoors. At the same time, you started doing more of your work in Gunma, right?

Katayama: I had my first solo gallery exhibition at TRAUMARIS | SPACE. Along with you’re mine, I also exhibited an objet d’art made of plaster in the shape of my own body. I went to my parent’s house once when I was making that work. Working with all that plaster was a lot of work and I needed a proper space to do it in, so I decided to make it where my parents were living, in Ota City, Gunma.

At that time, the new gallery in Maebashi City, Arts Maebashi, started a new project called Artist in Residence (AIR) and invited me to be their first resident artist. From October 2014 and February 2015 I stayed there for 55 days over the course of three months and made work there. I often take off my artificial leg so I can focus on my work so until I was invited to do AIR I was only able to make work at home. I was a bit worried but the people I met at Maebashi made me feel at home. We became friends that would go drinking every night and they really helped me out a lot, and we created a lot of photographs during that residence. It was then that I realised that perhaps them most important thing for an artist was a space in which they feel comfortable creating their work in. Then, in 2015, I returned to Ota City, where I was born and raised.

I now live in Isesaki City. There’s nothing here but farmland, but I find it quite interesting. There are cows being raised here not for their meat or milk, but to make fertiliser. They just eat, sleep, poop, eat again, and repeat day after day on this huge farm. It makes me kind of emotional. (laughs) When you’re driving around Isesaki you can see all these huge sago palms on the side of the road and the interesting plants people are growing in their gardens. Although I say that there’s nothing out here in the country side, you can flip that around and say that there is a lot of something here, and that’s space. When there’s this much space, people are going to use it, and I like to see what they do with it.

—You mentioned that the photobook was a way of marking an end of an era for your work, so what do you plan on doing moving forward?

Katayama: I feel like I have a lot more freedom now. I’ve been in the art world for 10 years now, and by meeting more and more people I feel more and more potential in myself. I only dabbled in photography a bit in the past but now I’m making more conscious efforts to take photos, and I think that this is a big change for me. In the past six months I’ve gone out and taken a lot of landscape photos in Michigan in the US and the Watarasegawa area around my home.

—Why the switch to landscape photography?

Katayama: I’m more interested in photographing the people within the landscape rather than the landscape itself. Environments we call “natural” usually always has some sort of manmade element in it. Thinking of landscapes as something people made for themselves makes me appreciate them more. I love to think about how a place was formed and what kind of people inhabited it. But that doesn’t mean that I want to specifically photograph people going about their day to day lives. It sounds kind of contradictory when I say that after saying I want to photograph human activity, but I plan to explore this further in a future body of work.

—Would you say a landscape being formed by the acts of humans is similar to how you expressed that you as an artist was formed by the people you’ve met?

Katayama: I think yes, and no. Thinking back on my life, I don’t think I’ve achieved anything according to my own will and desire. I tried my best in school and in job hunting because I was expected to, but that was it.

—So you feel like the effort you’ve put in and the results you’ve gotten are very disconnected from your own desire?

Katayama: I feel like what I’m disconnected from is this notion of “normal”. What I wish for isn’t particularly hard to achieve but it somehow keeps eluding me. The harder I try and reach for it the further it gets, and what I end up grabbing is something else entirely. It’s gotten me down a lot in the past but now I see this as another one of life’s little surprises. I’ve slowly come to accept that I can’t become what is “normal”, and that’s fine.

When I’m choosing clothes for my child I like to pick something that’s a little different from what I see around us, but then my friends say to me “why did you pick that?” (laughs). Even for the clothes I pick for myself! All my life I’ve been fighting with wanting to be “normal” but knowing deep down that I can’t, but now that I’ve accepted that I will never be “normal” I’m looking forward to what will unfold in my life. I have no idea what’s going to happen but it’s exciting.

—You speak about yourself like you’re speaking about another person.

Katayama: I think I do tend to, yeah. I feel like I’m observing this Mari Katayama person all the time and think “maybe I should’ve laughed here” or “maybe I should act happy here”.

—You seem to be very aware of and sensitive where you stand in society.

Katayama: Yes, I often think about how I could just try and blend into the “normal” of society and live like that but it won’t ever feel right, and I feel like part of that is due to how my body feels. Sort of like how left-handed people will always feel a bit left out in a right-handed society. If you’re different in some way, how you feel towards society and how people act towards you will also differ greatly, and I think that’s interesting.

Of course that doesn’t mean you should just be happy about your circumstances, but I’m lucky in the way that because I have a body and sense that’s different from “normal” I notice things and make connections between things that other people don’t. And because of that, I was able to make a lot of great friends. Ms. Kazue Kobata told me that I have a very universal body because I’m able to experience so many different things in this way, and I love that. I’m able to surpass the boundaries of language, gender, and culture to connect with others not because of my disability per se, but because of how my body was built. Ms. Kobata taught me that this is what it means to be different from other people.

—Normality and common sense are what connect people, but on the other hand it also carries the risk of dividing them. But when you know you are different from someone, you pre-emptively try to avoid that divide. When you realise that you are different from someone, you know to not judge them according to your common sense so now you’re less likely to accidentally offend them.

Katayama: Exactly, and I think that’s how we’re able to connect. And you’re able to also realise that even if someone seems like they’re living a normal life on the outside, they probably have their own unique story or circumstances even if it’s not visible in “normal” society. I hope that whenever someone meets me and gets to know about my circumstances, they can realise that there are many different perspectives to the society we all live in and that every perspective is worth knowing about.

I did seriously consider becoming a public servant once upon a time, before I happened to fall into the career of an artist. I thought someone with my life experience would be great in Residential Affairs at the Town Hall. I still wonder why I still ended up pursuing something different to what I wanted, but even though I didn’t become the person I wanted to I think that’s ok. Where I would be making one-on-one contact as a residential affairs officer, I would be reaching out to a wider and farther audience as an artist. Reaching out to many other people is part of an artist’s job, and I believe that this is the mission I’ve been given.

Reference: Wakayama, M. 2019, ‘Katayama Mari intabyuu yunibaasaru na shintai to iu GIFT’, weblog, IMA, viewed 31 May 2020, <https://imaonline.jp/articles/interview/20190819mari-katayama/#page-1>.

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