Photo By Gail

Japanese multimedia artist Mari Katayama (b. 1987) uses her body and the materials she finds around her to make self portraits, embroidered objects and living sculptures. Playing with conventions of the self-portrait, Katayama creates hand-sewn sculptures and photographs that prompt conversations and challenge misconceptions about our bodies. Born with the developmental condition congenital tibial hemimelia, Katayama chose to have her legs amputated at the age of nine.

Her wearable sculptures, which feature in her images, often include limbs, hands, and embellished hearts. She has said, “the hearts I make are always broken hearts. That’s because a broken heart, which has been bumped, tumbled, and battered, shines like a mirrorball, and reflects light from multiple sides, good and bad, much more than a smooth and fresh heart without a scratch.”

I’m Wearing Little High Heels, I Have Child’s Feet (2018) is made up of two photographs from 2011, and features Katayama posed in her bedroom in Gunma, Japan. She is surrounded by personal possessions – including clothing, fabrics, and sewing equipment – and a life-size, embroidered soft sculpture in the shape of a human body.

The work closely relates to Katayama’s work as an activist and public speaker. Frustrated by the fact that high heels for wearers of prosthetic limbs were not readily available, the artist began to make her own. The work developed into the High Heel Project, where she documents her process of making and wearing high heels with artificial legs.

Photographed in the Tate Modern Museum in London