Bringing together two distinct and influential contemporary practices, this conversation features exhibiting artists KATAYAMA Mari and TAWADA Yuki. Together they will explore themes of identity, embodiment, transformation and self-representation, each giving insight into the possibilities of image-making today.
A discussion with the artists will be moderated by curator and art historian Lena Fritsch.
Interpretation provided by Kozue Etsuzen.
Details on how to access this event will be confirmed upon registration. Please check your junk folders if you haven't received an email from TPG staff confirming your place.
Dr Lena Fritsch is an award-winning curator and writer, dividing her time between London, UK and Berlin, Germany. A specialist in Japanese photography and an experienced translator, Fritsch has published monographs on the work of Ishiuchi Miyako (2026) and Morimura Yasumasa (2008), and the first English-language overview on post-war Japanese photography, Ravens & Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945 (Thames & Hudson, 2018/2024). Her extensive curatorial career has seen her work at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Tate Modern, London; and Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie, Berlin. She has orchestrated over 15 exhibitions, including Tokyo: Art & Photography at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2021), which garnered numerous 5-star reviews. In 2022, she co-curated the Roppongi Crossing Triennial of contemporary Japanese art at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Fritsch has taught at the University of Oxford and University of London, and lectures regularly at museums. She holds a PhD in Art History from Bonn University, Germany and also studied at Keio University, Tokyo.
KATAYAMA Mari creates works, departing from hand-sewn objects and extending to photography, video, and installation, as a practice of ascertaining the society, social roles, and landscapes that are interwoven and resonating in multiple layers. Her hand-sewn objects appear repeatedly, changing in form and function, in each self-portrait series, thereby making the norms and gazes inherent in society visible. In the making of photographs, KATAYAMA always releases the shutter herself: by engaging with the relationship of ‘taking/being taken,’ she examines the boundaries and dynamics between the self and the other. Using settings constructed with mirrors or her own room as the stage for photography, KATAYAMA reflects not only on relationships and frictions, but also on the world and the structures that lead to them. Through these processes, she questions the nature of boundaries: the relation between ‘I’ and ‘you,’ what constitutes ‘correctness,’ and where the line between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ lies.
TAWADA Yuki (born in Hamamatsu, Japan, 1978) uses photography as well as sculpture and video in her work. She attended Tōhoku University, where she majored in biochemistry. As part of her university and graduate studies, she studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she fell in love with photography. After completing her studies in Japan, she attended Camberwell College of Arts at the University of the Arts London, where she became interested in the physicality of photography and the possibility of working with the surface of a photograph. TAWADA engages with the themes of spirituality and healing, using innovative methods such as scraping and burning the surfaces of her photographs or creating sculptural installations with lace-like cutouts of photographs. Through mesmerising immersive installations, she translates the deep spirituality of her work into physical experiences for viewers. TAWADA currently teaches photography and video at Kyoto University of the Arts.
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This event is programmed in connection to the exhibition I'm So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers 1950s to now, curated by Lesley A. Martin, TAKEUCHI Mariko and Pauline Vermare. The exhibition is organised by Aperture in collaboration with the Rencontres d’Arles with support from Kering | Women In Motion, Ishibashi Foundation, Anne Levy Charitable Trust,1970 Japan World's Exposition Memorial Fund, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, OKAN and Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. Additional curatorial collaboration for the exhibition in London, with Taous Dahmani, The Photographers’ Gallery.
