MARI KATAYAMA
This is how we stand our ground
2 November – 21 December 2024

Suzanne Tarasieve website

Mari Katayama’s work presents the universality that exists in her autobiographical story, while questioning the viewer about the preconceptions and norms of society that influence the construction of individual identity. How do we perceive others, and how are we perceived by others? And where does “I” end and “you” begin? Her work encourages us to reflect on our own shape and role as a member of society who defines these boundaries.

Katayama’s creative process began with elaborately hand-sewn fabric-based objects, which developed into self-portrait photography. In 2024, Katayama created her most ambitious hand-sewn work to date, which will debut physically in the autumn of 2025 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

This object, featured in her latest series red shoes, was made by stitching together the fabrics on which photographs of Katayama!s skin and hands are printed. It functions as an accessory, a costume, and a set, both revealing and concealing her body. The red high heels seen in her images were created as part of the High Heel Project (HHP), with the Italian shoe brand Sergio Rossi collaborating as a production partner. HHP was initiated in 2011 to create high heel shoes for prosthetics. This project is still ongoing, demanding the “freedom of choice” for all no matter what physical abilities they have. Katayama says that these red high heels belong to everyone who was involved in the second phase of the project.

Also on view in addition to the HHP-related works is the caryatid series. This series is derived from the ancient statues that supported the facades of Greek and Roman architecture. Having admired them since she was small, Katayama projected her own sense of disconnection from the ground and sense of floating (on top of prosthetic legs) on the role of the caryatid statues, which connect the skies and the earth. At the time of her first solo exhibition abroad five years ago, Katayama felt she had to survive in a world inhabited by two-legged creatures. Since then, while questioning fixed ideas and rules in society, she has also accepted the complexity and gradation of these norms, and has been seeking a way to live with them. It has also been a journey of searching for a way to “stand on the ground” as well as a flexibility to attain it, both physically and financially, as a person and as an artist, with the same strength and beauty as the caryatid statues. The caryatid series shines like a pillar. As well as the forms of family or community bound not necessarily by blood or contract, which was nurtured during the journey, this series of works illuminates her own answers to the questions about the values created by humankind, such as “correctness” and “beauty”.

The black and white photographs of the caryatid series are hand-printed one by one together with a trusted artisan printer to the artist.

Born in 1987, Mari Katayama’s work has been featured in numerous notable exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2019), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (2021), Foto Arsenal Wien (2023), andRencontres d’Arles (2024). Her pieces are held in prominent public and private collections such as the MEP, Tate Modern, CNAP, and Fondation Francès.

SUZANNE TARASIEVE PARIS
7, rue Pastourelle – 75003 Paris T : + 33 (0)1 42 71 76 54