{"id":30977,"date":"2015-03-30T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T23:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.fragmentsmag.com\/en\/?p=30977"},"modified":"2017-04-11T00:51:55","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T15:51:55","slug":"mari-katayama-youre-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.fragmentsmag.com\/en\/2015\/03\/mari-katayama-youre-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridging the Gap Between “Abnormal” and “Normal” | Mari Katayama First Solo Exhibition “you’re mine”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""You're

“you’re mine” 2015, http:\/\/www.shell-kashime.com\/<\/p><\/div>\n

In the last few years, the young Katayama has been actively widening the scope of her artistic works. In 2012, she won the Tokyo Marunouchi Grand Prize Art Award. In 2013, she was the youngest participant in the Aichi Triennale. That same year, she modeled in fashion shows and did art performances in France. In 2014, she appeared on TV shows and dramas, further expanding the domain of her artistic activities.<\/p>\n

Along with her unevenly amputated legs, her left hand has only two fingers. It is “like a crab’s” as she herself put it. Up to this day, Katayama has continued to observe other people in order to bridge the gap between her “abnormal” body and a “normal” body. She has been expressing her observations and interpretations of people and society through the art of her self-portraits.<\/p>\n

For two months, beginning December 17th, 2014, she held her first solo exhibition at the Traumaris Gallery in Ebisu. The exhibition represented the installation work “you’re mine,” from which its title was taken, and five more art series including her self-portraits. <\/p>\n

Taking the center stage of this exhibition, “you’re mine” is an art installation that consists of a self-portrait, a plaster figure in her likeness, and a full-length mirror. This work represents the answer she found after continually gazing at the “abnormal” and the “normal,” and puts the dot on the Mari Katayama she has been up until now.<\/p>\n

What feelings did she put into this work? Mari Katayama recalls the roots of her artworks and the sight she found beyond unceasingly tracing her own body. She talks about what the Mari Katayama from here on shall bring forth.<\/p>\n

\u2192Next Page\uff1aAbout her works until today and about self-portrait<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

Copying the “Normal”<\/h3>\n

Since birth, Katayama was clubfooted with thin, curving legs. Until the amputation of her legs at 9 years old, she walked with orthosis. Now that her legs have been amputated, Katayama looks back at the days when she kept comparing her movements with those of others\u2014movements that deviated from the “normal,” movements born from her body, which was not “normal.”<\/p>\n

I never had \u2018normal\u2019 legs, so I couldn’t help but be interested in people’s movements and kept trying to imitate them. From the guy who drags his feet when he walks, to a woman’s clippety-clop walk. Bowlegged men too. I tried to copy all of their movements. I thought that if I was able to imitate all of them, I could become just like a normal person. I really hated how I walked differently from other people, so I thought I had to fix myself. Because of that, I was very interested in how other people took steps, how they walked, and how they ran, and I observed them to an extreme.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Mari

Mari in her orthosis.<\/p><\/div>\n

Even now, she still remembers the senses from when she still had legs. Sometimes, she would feel a cramp in her legs despite them supposedly not being there anymore. Sometimes, she would also feel an itch at the back of her foot. Even though her prosthetic legs don’t have nerve connections, when she senses the force of her feet rising from the ground, she also feels the sense of the ground touching the soles of her feet. She can even recall senses she felt down to the tip of her toes.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it strange? Since I still felt them, I couldn\u2019t tell whether artificial legs can be considered part of the human body or not. There was a time I thought about that a lot. Since I couldn’t determine where my body began and ended; I was kind of tracing my body with objets-d\u2019arts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She tried reproducing her legs as they were before the amputation. She made a life-sized patchwork of herself with the legs she imagined and reproduced as they would have been had they not been cut off; she used her objet d’art as a means to trace and understand her body.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cin <\/a>
\u201cin my room\u201d 2009, http:\/\/www.shell-kashime.com\/ <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"\u201cpink <\/a>
\u201cpink legs\u201d, 2009 http:\/\/www.shell-kashime.com\/ <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

She originally started to take her self-portraits to show the objet d’art she made. People would not be able to grasp how large the objects were if they were shown by themselves. She thought she would become a mannequin and take the works into her hands in order to vividly show them.<\/p>\n

\u2192Next Page\uff1aCreating Social Faces to End Misconceptions About Life and Personality<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Misconceptions about Life and Personality<\/h3>\n

However, the photography works created from those circumstances casted another confusion on Katayama.<\/p>\n

When people saw the self-portrait they would say ‘Oh, so this is how she lives normally in everyday life.’ But me in the photography is totally far from it. The positioning of the box and the computer, and how I myself position in it\u2014I calculated every single one of those and made a ‘Mari Katayama Portrait.’ It\u2019s really a social side of me and very superficial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\u201csmoking <\/a>
\u201csmoking area\u201d #1401, 2014, http:\/\/www.shell-kashime.com\/ <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"\u201csmoking <\/a>
\u201csmoking area\u201d 2013, http:\/\/www.shell-kashime.com\/ <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

As she started to gather attention, she had more chances to appear in various media outlets, but this left her feeling conflicted.<\/p>\n

It was usually like ‘We made a scenario for the program that is like, \u2018Ms. Katayama is a very hard-working person. She had it tough, being bullied for having prosthetic legs, but she still did her best through it all. Would you fit into this scenario?’ Because everyone portrayed this \u2018tough-girl Katayama\u2019 as ‘the real face\u2019 of me.<\/p>\n

Indeed, well, even though my circumstances may seem tough when compared to those of ‘normal people,’ but I take that it was just something I couldn’t change. I never thought I’d like to portray anything like ‘I had it tough!’ That’s why I thought I needed to make it clear that that’s not how it was. I needed to adjust how things were flowing, so I had to make up another ‘social face’ to end misconceptions about my life and personality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The biggest catalyst was when TV documentary makers filmed her for three and a half years. During the shooting, she had to face a camera for long hours almost every single day, which made her wear a \u2018social face\u2019 for every single moment.<\/p>\n

At the end of it, she says she was so tired and thought, \u2018Please don’t shoot me anymore.\u2019 However, in order to hide her \u2018privacy\u2019 that she didn’t want to show, she couldn\u2019t give in at any cost. Thus, she was forced to constantly create a \u2018social face\u2019 to show to the camera.<\/p>\n

That was probably what tired me out so much. Yes, we all create a ‘social face’ to make things go well in society. What you’re like at the office and what you’re like at home are very different. You even change what type of yourself to show to each of your friends. But at those times, it really made me think a lot why humans were made to function that way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2192Next Page\uff1aHow She Disappeared into the \u2018Normal\u2019<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Disappearing into the \u2018Normal\u2019<\/h3>\n

In all of that, thinking about how she had different faces led her to create “you’re mine.”<\/p>\n

This art installation is composed of her three “selves.” The first self is the plaster figure made from Katayama\u2019s mold, in which she even molded her fingerprints. A mirror is attached where the face should be as a symbolic figure of how she copies the person in the reflection. This is the symbol of how she \u2018stole\u2019 behaviors and movements from various people.<\/p>\n

\"

Installation of “you’re mine” at TRAUMARIS gallery. \u00a9TAKEO YAMADA<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The next self is Katayama as she appears in her self-portrait. Wearing a bodysuit and stockings to cover her prosthetic legs and thick make-up with a wig, the figure holds an unnatural pose in the photograph taken. This is her “social face,\u201d which she created by copying other people.<\/p>\n

The last self can be found in the life-size full-length mirror. This is the reflection of her “current self.”<\/p>\n

She took the phenomenon of the doppelg\u00e4nger as a metaphor for this artwork. It is said that if three doppelg\u00e4ngers gather in one place, the person they resemble will disappear. Therefore, she placed three of her selves in one place to show the answer she came up with: that no one has a \u2018real\u2019 self under the superficial faces we wear to be well off in society. <\/p>\n

\"Plaster

Plaster figure made from Katayama\u2019s mold with mirror for the face. \u00a9TAKEO YAMADA<\/a><\/p><\/div>

\"Full-length

Full-length mirror to reflect the “current.” “Nothing will show unless I myself wasn’t there,” Katayama says. \u00a9TAKEO YAMADA<\/a><\/p><\/div>

<\/div><\/p>\n

Actually, the question\u2014why she creates different a “social face” for herself, and why everyone behaves that way\u2014unexpectedly released her from a trauma that had haunted her for years.<\/p>\n

‘If I do this in this situation, I will be liked’ or ‘If I do this, I will be scolded’ or ‘I will be hated.’ I realized that to function well in society, everyone learns how to behave by watching other people.<\/p>\n

When I thought, ‘Oh, so everyone watches and steals bits of other people to build themselves,’ I thought ‘They’re probably doing the same thing that I was doing when I kept imitating other people.’<\/p>\n

Ever since I could remember, I’ve always wanted to fit into the ‘normal,’ so I had a complex about myself since I imitated and ‘absorbed’ different people. I thought that I was merely a patchwork, and that I may be empty inside.<\/p>\n

But then I realized that I was just ‘the same as everyone else.’ I guess that means that I’ve already completely fit into the ‘normal.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2192Next Page\uff1aAbout Katayama from now on.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Beyond the Answer -There is No \u201cReal\u201d Me<\/h3>\n

Another reason she was able to think herself \u201cnormal\u201d was that she gained another option to express herself. With the \u201chigh-heel project,\u201d the project to go out in the town wearing high heels with amputated legs,<\/a> she has expanded her chance to do performing arts, such as pole dancing and singing.<\/p>\n

She says her favorite is singing. With a heartbreaking voice, she sings foreign songs with no flaws. However, she says she has never had singing lessons.<\/p>\n

Here again, I copied. I copied how singers sing, how they breathe, how they move her mouth, her accent. I sang all of the songs from the singer, until I got this feeling that I copied her completely. I don\u2019t know how to pronounce foreign language \u201ccorrectly,\u201d but I know how to pronounce like the singer. However, I never got a high score in karaoke, so maybe I am not alike.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Note: Karaoke has a scoring system, and automatically evaluates the singer based on how well the person sang.)<\/small><\/p>\n