Mari Katayama works in her studio in Gunma Prefecture, where she creates the elaborate environments and handmade forms that appear in her photographs. | ANNA PETEK
Aug 29, 2026
Mari Katayama has spent years putting herself in front of the camera. Her photographs surround her with handmade sculptures, textiles and mirrors, turning her body into one element in complex, surreal compositions. It would be easy to call the work self-portraiture. Katayama would rather have you look beyond the body.
Her recent “tree of life” (2024-25) series offers one example. Katayama builds elaborate, almost otherworldly environments in which she appears among hand-stitched forms, gauzy garlands called “koilia” (after the Greek word for “stomach” and “inner feelings”) and other props, including tree branches and a fake crocodile head. Multiple mirrors fracture and repeat the scene, making Katayama’s body appear to multiply within a dense world of fabric, foliage and fantastical forms.
“Until now, my work has focused on the relationship between ‘you’ and ‘me’: between me and objects, me and my own body, me and society, me and institutions,” the 39-year-old artist says. “While building those kinds of relationships, I realized that I needed to think about the very stage, or structural system, that ‘me’ and whoever that ‘someone’ is are standing on.”
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