PIANSHANZHENLI

artist

MARI KATAYAMA

Mari Katayama was born in Saitama in 1987 and raised in Gunma, Japan. She received a master’s degree from the Department of Intermedia Art at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2012. Suffering from congenital tibial hemimelia, Katayama had both legs amputated at the age of nine. Since then, she has created numerous self-portrait photos together with embroidered objects and decorated prostheses, using her own body as a living sculpture. In 2011, she started “High Heel Project,” in which she wore customized high-heeled shoes specially made for prostheses to perform on stage as a singer and a model. Her major exhibitions include “58th Venice Biennale 2019” (Giardini and Arsenale, Venice, Italy); “Broken Heart” (White Rainbow, London, 2019); “Photographs of Innocence and of Experience - Contemporary Japanese Photography vol.14” (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, 2017); “On the way home” (The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, 2017); “Roppongi Crossing - My body, your voice” (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2016); and “Aichi Triennale 2013” (Nayabashi, Aichi). Her first photobook, titled “GIFT,” was published in 2019 by United Vagabonds. She was awarded the 35th Higashikawa Award in the New Photographer category (2019), and the 45th Kimura Ihei Photography Prize (2020).

academic advisor 

Kasahara Michiko (1957- ) 

Vice director of the Artizon Museum, the Ishibashi Foundation

Born in Nagano prefecture, Japan. B.A. in Sociology, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 1983 M.A. in photography, Columbia College, Chicago, 1987. Curator of Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography from 1989 to 2002.  Curator of Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo from 2002 to 2006.  Chief curator of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum from 2007 to 2017.

Selected curatorial works: "Love's Body-Art in the age of AIDS", 2010, "on your body, Japanese contemporary photography", 2008; "ishiuchi miyako, mother's 2000 - 2005, traces of the future", as a commissioner of Japanese pavilion of the 51st Venice biennale, 2005 (which traveled to Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2006 and The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007); "mot annual, life actually, the works of contemporary japanese women", the museum of contemporary art, Tokyo, 2005; "urban relationship, sustainable" as a guest curator in the part of "2003 City_net Asia" project, the Seoul Museum of Art, 2003; "out of the ordinary/extraordinary: Japanese contemporary photography", Japan Foundation, 2004 (international traveling exhibition); "On Landscape, Contemporary Japanese Photography", 2002; "Kiss in the Dark: Contemporary Japanese Photography", 2001; "American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection", 2000; "Love's Body-Rethinking the Naked and the Nude in Photography", 1998; "Alfred Stieglitz and his Contemporaries", 1997; "Gender Beyond Memory, The Works of Contemporary Women Artists", 1996; "Critical Landscape", 1993; "Border/Borderless, Japanese Contemporary Photography", 1993; "American Documents in the fringe", 1991; "Exploring the Unknown Self-Self-portraits of Contemporary Women", 1991; "Moholy-Nagy and the New Vision", 1990.

*the exhibitions which do not mention the venues was held by and in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.   

Selected Books: "Essays on Photography from Gender Perspective 1991 -2017", Satoyama-sha, 2018. "Photographs of the War, Its History and Meaning", The Politics Behind the War, Seikyu-sha, Tokyo, 2004; Photography As a Bulwark Against Era, Seikyu-sha, Tokyo, 2002; The Politics Behind the Nude, Chikuma Shobo, Tokyo, 1998.  

curator

RongRong & inri

RongRong (China) and inri (Japan) have been working together since 2000. Their works reflect the intimate world that they have created together and push the boundaries of traditional black-and-white darkroom techniques. Their critically acclaimed series of works, such as Mt. Fuji (2001), Liulitun (1996-2003), and Tsumari Story (2012-2014), reflect their shared life and surroundings, delving into the rapidly changing world around them.

In 2007, RongRong & inri established the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in the Beijing arts district Caochangdi. In 2008, they launched the annual Three Shadows Photography Award, a prize aimed at discovering and encouraging China’s most promising young photographers. In 2010, they started a collaboration with the Arles International Photography Festival (Les Rencontres d'Arles) and co-produced the Caochangdi Photo Spring Festival in Beijing for three years – from 2010 to 2012. They have continued this collaboration at Three Shadows’ Xiamen location, where since 2015 they have co-hosted the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival.

RongRong&inri received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize at the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards, recognized for both their careers as artists and their significant impact on Asian photography.