Mari Katayama (b. 1987, Gunma, Japan) is a contemporary artist whose practice centers on self-representation, embodiment, and the politics of the body. Working across photography, sculpture, installation, and performance, she uses her own body as both subject and medium, constructing carefully staged self-portraits that blur distinctions between living presence and crafted object. Katayama was born with tibial hemimelia and uses prosthetic limbs, which appear throughout her work not as medical devices but as aesthetic and conceptual extensions of the self.
Through textiles, sewn forms, and intimate domestic settings, she explores how identity is assembled, displayed, and perceived. Her images resist narratives of pity or heroism, instead asserting autonomy and complexity. Themes of control, vulnerability, femininity, and self-fashioning recur, as Katayama questions normative ideas of beauty and completeness. Handcrafted elements, including embroidered fabrics and sculptural limbs, function as both protective armor and expressive language, emphasizing the body as something mutable, authored, and continuously reimagined rather than fixed or deficient.
Katayama’s work has been exhibited widely in Japan and internationally, marking her as a significant voice in contemporary art. Major exhibitions include her participation in the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, which brought her work to broad global attention. She has presented solo exhibitions at venues such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Akio Nagasawa Gallery in Tokyo, and White Rainbow in London. Her work has also been shown at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and included in large-scale group exhibitions such as Mori Art Museum’s Roppongi Crossing. These exhibitions situate Katayama’s practice within global conversations on body politics, selfhood, and contemporary photographic expression.