Mari Katayama has been named the winner of the inaugural Mori Art Award. The final selection took place on February 25, overseen by an international jury of museum directors: Mami Kataoka, Rhana Devenport, Glenn D. Lowry, Frances Morris, Suhanya Raffel, and Eugene Tan.

Established in 2025, the biennial award forms one of the Mori Contemporary Art Foundation (MoriCAF)’s two core programs, alongside its Curator Residency Program for overseas curators researching Japanese contemporary art. Conceived by the late Yoshiko Mori, who passed away in January this year, the prize recognizes midcareer artists working in Japan, aiming to raise their international profiles while strengthening the global presence of Japanese contemporary art. 

The selection began with a board of Japan-based curators who nominated a lineup of artists for consideration. From the list, the international jury identified four finalists. Katayama received the grand prize of JPY 10 million (USD 64,000) and will present a solo exhibition organized jointly by MoriCAF and the Mori Art Museum. The remaining finalists—Meiro Koizumi, 目[mé], and Chikako Yamashiro—were each awarded JPY one million.

Katayama’s practice is rooted in the lived experience of her own body, which she stages as mannequins or soft sculptures using hand-sewn textiles and analog photography. Her work is held in the collections various institutions, such as Tate Modern in London, the Antoine de Galbert Foundation in Paris, and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Recent major projects include her contribution to “Performer and Participant” at Tate Modern in 2023 and her participation in the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, where her works appeared in both the Giardini and the Arsenale. She received the Higashikawa Award in the New Photographer category in 2019 and the Kimura Ihei Award in 2020.

Aisha Traub Chan is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.