MUSEmemoirs

Info

• Dates: 02.11.24 – 21.12.24
• Curator:
• Where: Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve
• Price: free

“Even though I can be grateful to my body for allowing me to live, I know it is absolutely impossible to love it completely, and, if I’m being honest, it inspires a profound disgust in me. And yet, when my body is photographed, that disgust, along with the effort I put into taking the pictures, disappears as if by magic.”

-Mari Katayama

Mari Katayama is a photographer born in 1987 in Saitama, Japan. Her shots are magnetic, combining an attractive beauty with alienating details that invite the viewer to linger on the images and question what is considered familiar. Impeccable makeup, an aesthetic drawn from the world of fashion photography, calibrated lighting, and carefully thought-out compositions. Yet, Mari’s body, always the protagonist of her photographs, reveals another side of the coin in the same image, thanks to its uniqueness outside of traditional standards, confronting the viewer with an unexpected duality.

Katayama lost part of her lower limbs as a child due to a congenital disease that also caused a deformation in her hand. In her youth, she struggled to find her place, feeling pointed at and pitied. However, this sense of alienation became the driving force behind her creativity. She began sewing clothes and objects: her hands, although unique, became very skilled, shaped by the experience of having to compensate for the rest of her limbs. We see one of this objects displayed at the gallery. At a certain point, she decided to showcase these objects to the outside world, using herself as a mannequin: this is where her practice as a photographer began.

Katayama is distinguished by an almost obsessive attention to detail in the preparation of her self-portraits. Staging is essential for her, and every photograph conceals hours of set preparation and arrangement of personal objects that act as narrative elements. In her early days, still in high school, Mari decided to share these creations on social media, during the MySpace era. With few friends or social interactions, the internet became a way for her to present herself to the world.

Recurring subjects in Katayama’s photographs are her limbs, from her hands to the prosthetics she makes no effort to hide. For the series presented at Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Red Shoes (2023) the artist presents herself covered by one of the costumes made by herself. This object is imprinted with images of her own body parts, mostly her hands, creating a tangle from where her body emerges, where the viewer cannot distinguish what is fabric and what is flesh. What is clearly highlighted are the red heels she wears, which come from an ongoing project with the Italian shoe brand Sergio Rossi, to produce high heels for people with prosthetics.

Mari Katayama’s pungent photographs invite us to reconsider aesthetic standards and value every kind of body, including those that society pushes us to ignore. Her photos encapsulate an intrinsic power precisely in their ability to direct our gaze to places we often avoid in real life. The pride in her poses, her self-determination, and the care that emanates from every shot reveal the immense self-awareness of this artist, who challenges the traditional standards of portraiture with her self-portraits.

The exhibition at Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve is simply yet thoughtfully conceived, drawing attention to each individual photograph. Elements of scenography, such as seashell decorations adorning the gallery’s walls and ceiling, echo the intricate details of Mari’s frames, where she often glues tiny shells with precision. These subtle touches forge a deeper connection between the artist’s work and the space.

My personal highlights:

• Red Shoes #002
• Caryatid #012
• Caryatid #002