Introduction: The Cycle of Life and Sensory Practice

Noriko Katsura’s paintings are a sensory practice that transcends anthropocentric worldviews, grounded in the cycles

of life, ornamentation and decay, and a bodily perception beyond sight.

Painting as Organically Transforming Lifeforms

I do not regard my paintings as “fixed objects” but as “organically transforming living beings” infused with the flow of “living

time.”

Their vibrant colors, dense details, and swelling forms ripple, melt, and flow. The foods I depict appear fresh and beautiful—yet

they are destined either to be consumed and become flesh, or to rot if left uneaten. Through this, I visualize the cycle of life—

food and the body, life and death, birth and decay.

A Multisensory Experience Beyond Vision

To “see” my works is to “touch,” “smell,” and “taste” them. I invite the viewer into a multisensory experience that challenges

visual centrality from within the medium of painting itself.

The Multitude: Food, the Body, and the Birth of Diverse Lives

Swarms of digesting and decomposing entities emerge as a “multitude,” symbolizing both the dissolution of the individual and

the birth of diverse forms of life.

This “excessive material sensation” reflects the contemporary body and its desires—a scene where the self disintegrates in a

whirl of otherness.

Beyond Renaissance: Relating to Nonhuman Existence

While my work is grounded in the visual traditions of Early Renaissance painting, I counter its human-centered narratives by

depicting relationships with nonhuman existences.

In contrast to divine order, I express a “chaotic celebration” teeming with life.

Though these living beings form groups, the absence of a clear narrative center gives rise to a space as a “field of

relationships.”

Viewers may feel as if they are immersed in and engulfed by the work.

Anonymous Creatures and Shimmering Skin

The creatures I paint transcend “gender” and “individual identity,” appearing anonymous yet imbued with organic memories

and emotions.

By blending decorative and abstract elements, I depict them like “shimmering skin.”

Through the merging of skin and the blurring of bodily contours, I emphasize a collective life-form beyond the individual.

Ornament and Decay: The Ambiguity of Beauty and Unrest

For me, ornamentation is not merely about beauty—it harbors decay, transformation, and the presence of life and death,

coexisting with both beauty and unrest.

Decentered Space and Entangled Vision

Flat decorative elements intertwine with bodies and space, evoking a tension between order and collapse, creation and

demise.

By eliminating centrality, I shift the viewer from a “seeing subject” to one who is “sensually entangled in the scene.”

This structure resonates with posthuman perspectives, where vision is not a “tool of knowledge and control” but a “device of

sensory resonance.”

The Allure of Decay and Posthuman Ethics

I do not ask the viewer to observe rationally from the outside, but to enter the work as a vulnerable, embodied being.

Within the work lie sensations that are both disturbing and alluring—rot, collapse, stickiness, ambiguity.

Rather than rejecting death or endings, I embrace a nonhuman-centric view in which even decay is part of life’s cycle.

My sense of beauty wavers at the boundary between ornament and decay, affirming “the incomplete, the broken, the

ambiguous.”

My ethical orientation places value not in human-centered permanence, but in “what continues to change,” “what

disappears”—a philosophical practice in itself.

Timeless Structures and Nonhuman Temporality

My compositions and motifs lack linear, narrative time progression. Instead, they embody cyclical, layered, and timeless

structures.

Life and death, creation and collapse, ornament and decay coexist, suggesting modes of being that escape a linear temporal

axis.

This reflects a time-consciousness beyond human time (beginning–middle–end)—a resonance with the time of cells, microbes,

climate, and soil.

Posthuman Artistic Practice as Sensory Resonance

My work is a space of sensory attunement with the “nonhuman,” mediated through the body.

Through painting, I reposition humans within a mesh of nature, ornament, memory, and sensation—an artistic practice

grounded in posthumanist thought.

My work transforms not only what we see, but also how we embody what we see.

We can no longer confine the meaning of life within the boundaries of “human.”