Mari Katayama’s Artful Prosthetics: Meaningful Experimental Fashion for Everyone

Mari Katayama is a Japanese artist who uses her creative and tailoring skills to create works that empower disabled people through fashion. Katayama herself had to have both her legs amputated at nine years old because of a rare condition called tibial hemimelia, yet this hasn’t stopped her from pursuing her dream of becoming an artist.

She makes high heels for prosthetic attachments that give amputees over eight limbs, and even dresses a mobility aid to transform its wearers into regal centaurs. All of her pieces present amputees and disabled people in an empowering light, showing that they are differently abled and not disabled. This is why her work is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Reduced Inequalities.

One of her seminal pieces is the series of photographs and hand-sewn objects titled bystander. The piece was made during her visit to Naoshima, a Japanese town famous for its Onna-Bunraku groups. These are traditional shadow puppet companies run solely by women, Kuroko (puppeteers), who move their puppets by using them like a glove. Katayama was inspired by how the hands of the Kuroko became the puppet's spines; like magic, they are responsible for its lifelike movements on stage. 

“In bystander, I photographed puppeteers’ hands and used them in my object works. It was the first time for me to feature other people’s bodies in my work, which allowed me to experience the difficulty and power of “living together,” shared Katayama. 

The photographed puppeteers’ hands were printed on fabric and sewn together as a skirt-like monstrosity. Katayama then took photographs of herself wearing the skirt. In certain photographs, she can sit upright, supported by her hands. At other times, she lies helplessly on the floor, her hands weighing her down. As she has said it herself, bystander is about what it feels like to live with other people as a disabled person. Sometimes those around them can lift them up, empower them so that they have the strength to stand on their own. At other times, bystanders can weigh down disabled people, making assumptions about what they can and cannot do that end up limiting what disabled people can do in their lives. Despite this dichotomy, with the piece, Katayama says that she feels as if she is a puppet, unable to live without other people and often at the mercy of their treatment.

Katayama’s other piece, the High Heel Project, takes on a more practical approach to empowerment. Frustrated by the limited shoe options available for prosthetics, Katayama decided to work with renowned Italian leather shoe designer Sergio Rossi to design a pair of high heels that have been fitted onto prosthetics. The piece was so popular that it opened doors for her to collaborate with prosthetic limb company Nabtesco to design different footwear for prosthetic legs. Aside from high heels, the project managed to churn out ready-to-wear fashionable pieces such as chunky sneakers, studded dress shoes and even flexible running shoes.

For Katayama, the project is about giving disabled people more freedom through the simple act of giving them shoe options to choose from. “High heels are not special. 

But I want them to be one of your free choices, which are important yet also nothing special,” said Katayama. This is why the work that Katayama does is important; it empowers disabled people, centres their narratives and gives them more freedom in a society where they are often not able to do so.

Find out more about Mari Katayama’s pieces and their other initiatives by checking their Instagram on @katayamari.