Previous: Mari Katayama
Broken Heart is a solo exhibition of photography and sculpture by Japanese artist Mari Katayama (b. 1987, Gunma, Japan) at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London, marking her first solo exhibition in the UK. Bringing together works produced between 2011 and 2017, the exhibition explored the body, identity, memory and perception. Having had both legs amputated at the age of nine, Katayama incorporates her body and prosthetics into her practice, examining beauty, femininity, vulnerability and wider attitudes towards disability and physical difference.
The exhibition included works such as I’m wearing little high heel and I have child’s feet (2011), you’re mine (2014), shell (2016), bystander (2016), on the way home (2017) and cannot turn the clock back (2017). Across these photographic and sculptural works, Katayama combines prosthetics, handmade garments and fragmented body parts to explore childhood, the idealised female body, motherhood and self-representation.
Through her use of the body as both subject and material, Katayama challenges conventional ideas of beauty, normality and physical difference. *Broken Heart* presented a deeply personal yet universal exploration of identity, memory and perception, introducing her practice to a UK audience.
Mari Katayama is an internationally recognised Japanese artist. Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Maison Européenne de la Photographie and the Venice Biennale. In 2019, Broken Heart at White Rainbow, London, marked her first solo exhibition in the UK. She has received the Mori Art Award Grand Prize (2026), Kimura Ihei Award (2020) and Higashikawa New Photographer Award (2019).
Her major exhibitions include Performer and Participant at Tate Modern, London (2023), Home Again at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2021), the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2016), and Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 14: Photographs of Innocence and of Experience at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2017). More recent presentations include Women in Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2025), Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest at South London Gallery (2025), and Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy at ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2026).
Year: 2019
Artist: Mari Katayama
Curator: Keith Whittle
Exhibition: Broken Heart
Venue: White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London
Country: United Kingdom
Exhibition Type: Solo exhibition
Publication: Accompanying catalogue featuring essays by Keith Whittle and Alice Butler, and a conversation with Simon Baker, and installation photographs.
Organised in cooperation with: rin art association, Gunma, Japan
Publication: Accompanying catalogue featuring essays by Keith Whittle and Alice Butler, a conversation with Simon Baker, and installation photographs.