Resistance 抵抗

As an artist who had always felt a special bond with objects around her since a small child, Katsura created in her early period works which were "straightforward presentations of objects" mainly employing collage. But after living through the war, she came to question the meaning of art works that were created totally outside the influences of social circumstances, and decided to include the elements of narrative, ideas, and the humanity, which she had formerly suppressed, into her work. The result was the new style that combined objects, in the form of either collage or painting, with stylized human figures. In this work titled "Resistance", the human figure has her long hair being pulled by a raw red claw and is struggling to hold against it by hanging onto a bird's foot. The bird, apparently trying to free itself from her hands, bends its neck and in flapping hard. The claw, the human figure, and the bird-the three are held still with the strong forces, which are felt intensely, cancelling one another. Katsura created her works in order to express what she felt and to build a world of her own, but what drove her to do so at the bottom was probably a need to resist the circumstances or conventional thinking. Katsura seems to look at a need, both her own and in general, with a cool, detached eye, as the touch of humor found in the expression of the human figure suggests.