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I arrive very early for the appointment, everyone knows the punctuality of the
Japanese
and I don't like the label of 'quite the opposite' of the Spanish, and I bump into her in the hall of
La Casa Encendida,
where from today until On April 28 he shows his work in
'Loving the Alien',
an exhibition that borrows its title from
David Bowie
's song to play, as he already did, with the multiple meanings of the word and the concept of identity and different.
Standing on her prosthetic legs,
Mari Katayama
(Saitama, Japan, 36 years old) is tall, almost six feet tall although today she is not wearing heels, but rather comfortable sneakers, and she walks light, volatile, rising above the rest effortlessly. . "It was very difficult for me to learn to
walk
after the operation. I wanted to do it in an
aesthetic
and natural way, so that it would not be noticeable that I was wearing a prosthesis. I love
beauty
and when I saw someone walk beautifully I wanted to study to know how to do it the same way." For quite a long time I wanted to be another
cog
in society, to be like the others, that's why I hid my prostheses," he tells me later.
One of Mari Katayama's works in La Casa Encendida.MK/LCE
Mari Katayama was born without
fibulas
, the longest bone in the leg, and with a malformation in her left hand, which developed with only two fingers, like a pincer. At nine years old she made the decision to amputate both legs and she assures that it was not as difficult for her as it may seem to whom she writes. "I had to
choose
between spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair or standing up and walking. The word cut seems to disappear, however, I knew that if I got rid of my
legs
I would have a future with more possibilities. I really It was a decision that I made with great joy, I was excited about the
operation
," she remembers.
At the bottom of that hard process, the hope of a girl to be equal to her schoolmates, to belong to the group. "When I was very
little
I didn't see myself as different from others, I lived in a special city, full of foreigners, where difference was normal. But when I arrived at school I was surprised by that uniform world that I wasn't used to. I felt
rejection
and harassment, and I blamed my physique for it, so I thought that when I had the prostheses I could join the group. But it wasn't like that, I arrived at the institute
walking
with my
shoes
and nothing changed. Then I realized that something physical doesn't change the around".
Bernardo Diaz
Mari Katayama speaks calmly, with a soft and sweet voice, like herself, a delicate aspect that surrounds her strong personality. She shows me her
prosthetics
with complete naturalness. They are designed to be seen, to show off, she has even decorated them herself with motifs full of
meaning
. "They all have something to do with me: the rosemary that I grow in my house, the mountain that I see from the windows, the wind in the area where I live, Plato's eight-legged creature, which for me implies many things, and the clamp crab
on my left
hand
, which is also the trunk of a tree and links to the sign of my horoscope, because I am cancer," he explains to me
.
She has taken off one of her prosthetics and with it raised in front of me she is pointing out all the drawings of her one by one.
Is it a way to claim your difference? "No, for me hiding them years ago was like a
game
, something like 'let's see if they are able to discover it'. But if I really walk in the natural and beautiful way that I can and that I like to do, no one is aware that I have
prosthesis
, because it is not noticeable. And then I risk bumping into someone when there are a lot of people. In that situation I often fall, that's why I have decided to
show them
. I give more importance to my own
safety
than to that game."
Now that you are a rising star, do you still feel that
hostile
gaze from before? "It is rarer, although it is also true that there are those who do not want to have a physical relationship with a person with a disability and those who have told me that you are born this way because in your previous life, before reincarnation, you have done something bad. Hearing those things It's a
shock
, but I immediately wonder why someone acts that way and the discomfort turns into curiosity, into interest in knowing the environment where they live and its
history
." Katayama remembers the months of
pregnancy
as especially difficult ; he has a daughter who is barely two years old. "With this physique it costs so much... and there was no resource to help me. At that moment I thought that maybe the world doesn't want a person like me to go outside."
Jazz artist and singer
Although she tells it in an easy way, that same world gave her little
respite
. Having finished her university studies in Art History, and with others in programming, accounting and economics - "what my mother considered most useful," she explains - she tried to look for work, but her condition forced her to find employment "within that percentage that they have." companies to hire people with
disabilities
, it was the only thing they could choose to do. And there was never anything for her. Once again, she was forced to hide the prosthesis from her. "I wanted to be part of the mechanism of the great
mechanism
that is society. That's why I hid my disability and worked in whatever I had, for example, as a singer in a
jazz club
, while I continued working in parallel on my art," he recalls. The first time she showed her work was in a commercial gallery in
Tokyo
, and from there she began to receive offers from her.
In her paintings, all self-portraits, Mari Katayama appears as if she were a
mannequin
, showing her mutilated legs. Has showing a different body helped you when it comes to achieving recognition? "In Japan what I do is considered
Outsider Art,
and that is why perhaps it has attracted more attention. But my works do not focus on my physique, the one that appears there is not me, it is not even a person, it is just one more element in the
composition
."
Bernardo Diaz
High heels
On the stage of that jazz club the
'High Heels Project'
emerged . She was singing when a drunk shouted at her from the audience: 'A woman who doesn't wear heels is not a woman.' "Then he threw his drink at me. Neither he nor anyone present knew that I had prosthetics. The next day I went to the hospital and asked them to make me ones where I could put high
heels
on . But in Japan they don't exist, they aren't sold." , remember. It was the beginning of the initiative that he now directs and that began in 2011. "When I started with this project what I wanted was to put on my heels and go on stage, but now I am going deeper into it. Heels are a symbol of
strength
, an element that conveys a very strong
message
, and they have to be a free choice for any woman.
That is why Mari Katayama began to investigate why
prostheses
are not manufactured that can adapt to high heels, what is the beautiful way to walk with them, and how wearing them would affect people with disabilities. "It is an issue of social
well-being
, fashion designs for people like us are not very
developed
, they are simply designed to be useful, to go to the bathroom, to eat... only functional. By dressing in that way you have a social relationship It really is a
luxury
, and no one dares to talk about it."
The
project
was put on standby in 2022, while Katayama recovered from her motherhood, but now she has taken it up again "perhaps in a more serious way" and with another dimension thanks to the collaboration of the Italian designer Sergio Rossi, whom she met through one of the followers of his work. In addition to getting involved in the project, along with her central Italian daughter
,
the creator has designed a personalized
'Mary Kay'
for her with which she happily steps on stage. And along with
Sergio Rossi
's designs ,
she has signed a collaboration contract with Vogue Japan and with a prosthetics company, Allux2. "The first step of the project, what I am looking for, is the freedom to
choose
, that women have more options to do what they want. Then there will be a second step, which is to talk about what they don't want." At this point she points out, for example, the day when a photographer asked her to take off her clothes to photograph her: "I don't know if he did it because I'm an
artist
, because I was young at the time, or as a joke, but it's not funny at all. There is "we have to break with this culture and avoid these unpleasantries for the following generations".
Heels, Katayama insists, are not just about appearance. "The most important thing is not to wear them or dress in a certain way, but to have the
freedom
to choose them, to say and do what you want; they are a
symbolic
element that allows you to also strengthen your interior."
How many hours a day do you wear
heels
? I ask him before saying goodbye. "As I'm already tall, I don't wear them much, only when I get on stage to sing. Now I enjoy them as an aesthetic object, I enjoy
looking at them
."