A solo exhibition of photography and sculpture at White Rainbow by Japanese artist Mari Katayama (b. 1987, Gunma, Japan). The artist’s first UK solo show. In Katayama’s evocative, self-portraits and embroidered textile sculptures the artist attempts to objectify her own physical condition by constructing an alternative narrative around the image of the stigmatized body. Using her body as the site where representations of difference and identity are inscribed, Katayama explores the tensions between her lived bodily experiences and the cultural meanings inscribed on the female body. Exposing the challenges ascertaining to her physicality and identity, by forcefully pulling the viewer into staged scenes or events, where fixed historical, social, and cultural norms are exposed as ideals to be challenged and redefined. The accompanying catalogue on Mari Katayama includes a newly commissioned essay by writer and critic Alice Bulter, and a new conversation between Mari Katayama and Simon Baker, director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and installation photographs.
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