Upcoming | Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles

From December 19, 2021 to March 6, 2022, Long Museum West Bund is pleased to present “Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles,”. The exhibition is a traveling exhibition that started in Mori Art Museum, Tokyo in 2019. On display are some 80 works ranging from her 1990s output to new pieces made specifically for this exhibition: in addition to large-scale installations, there are sculptures, performance videos, photographs, drawings, and materials related to her stage design projects. It is the first occasion to introduce viewers to an artistic career spanning some 25 years in a comprehensive fashion in China, also is the largest ever exhibition devoted to the Berlin-based, internationally active artist Shiota Chiharu. 

Shiota Chiharu’s works lead the audience to think about the meaning of life: what we all pursue in life, and where we are heading. This exhibition would start from a giant installation work Uncertain Journey (2016/2021).  Small iron wire-made boats shuttle through the main exhibition hall, the dense red threads gush out from the boats, tangled, intertwined, broken off, unraveled above audience. The thread is a symbolic material in Shiota’s installation works, the artist seems to be ‘painting’ in the space by changing the position of thread. These lines gradually form a surface and then completely fill the whole space. Shiota believes that ‘the red of these threads, as well as the color of blood’, which representing the connection between people, reflecting the artist’s inner world, and expressing the various states of relationships between people at the same time.

In installation work Where are we going? (2017/2021), several small white boats are suspended above the exhibition hall, as if they are sailing in the air, leading audience on an unknown journey. In Out of My Body (2019), the soul and body are gradually separated, mutilated limbs are scattered on the ground. This work was created when the artist knew that the cancer had back to her after 12 years, which made her had a deeply thinking about life. Accumulation: Searching for the Destination (2014/2021) is located at the end of exhibition, on the second floor of Long Museum. A large number of old suitcases are drawn by red threads, implying that the same number of individuals, people leaving the destination in their minds. The further you drift and the more you mix, the more you arrive at a place that allows you to re-examine their inner place.

The exhibition also embodies the concept of "present in absence", starting from the artist's personal experience, exploring and pursuing the inner workings of the soul. The work In Silence (2002/2021) is derived from the artist's deep memory: a fire in neighbor’s house and a burned piano when she was 9 years old. The black thread shows the wideness and vastness of the universe which we live in . Some things no longer exist in real life, but they exist deep in the artist's mind as a soul without form. The more you think about them, the more tangible their existence becomes. Connecting Small Memories (2019/2021) loosely string together a huge number of  tiny daily use items with red silk threads, condensing a complex network of things and items, network of items and people.

In addition to the symbolic thread, Shiota Chiharu is also good at using old ready-made items. In the large-scale installation Inside and Outside (2008/2021), Shiota collected abandoned wooden windows from multiple construction sites in Berlin and made them overlapped into a wall. The curved wall is a wall that separates time and space.

This exhibition will also trace back Shiota Chiharu 's early artistic practice through many documentary photos and videos: from painting and performance art to today's installation art. Stage design is also an important creative content of Shiota. Since 2003, Shiota Chiharu has created stage designs for nine opera and theater productions. For Shiota, whose practice has centered on the theme of “presence within absence” with a focus on installations, the space of the stage where singers, dancers, and actors, are “present” is a context that is completely different from that of a museum exhibition, which imbued Shiota’sown practice with a wider spectrum of possibilities.

Shiota Chiharu is famous for performance art and installation art, expressing her feelings for memory, anxiety, dreams, silence and other intangible things. Her works are derived from personal experience and have attracted audiences from all over the world by questioning seemingly universal concepts such as identity, boundaries and survival. The name of the exhibition "trembling soul" accurately refers to the artist's personal experience of touching the heart due to some indescribable emotions. At the same time, she is also eager to pass this shocking feeling to the audience and stimulate the audience to think about the meaning of life. And the inner workings of the soul.

Born in Osaka, 1972. Currently based in Berlin, Germany. Shiota’s inspiration often emerges from a personal experience or emotion which she expands into universal human concerns such as life, death and relationships. She has redefined the concept of memory and consciousness by collecting ordinary objects such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses, and engulfing them in immense thread structures. She explores this sensation of a ‘presence in the absence’ with her installations, but also presents intangible emotions in her sculptures, drawings, performance videos, photographs and canvases. 

In 2008, she was awarded with ‘the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists, Japan’. Her work has been displayed at international institutions worldwide including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Art Gallery of South Australia (2018); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2018); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2017); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2015); Smithsonian Institution Arthur M.Sackler Gallery, Washington DC (2014); the Museum of Art, Kochi (2013); and the National Museum of Art, Osaka (2008) among others. She has also participated in numerous international exhibitions such as the Oku-Noto International Art Festival (2017); Sydney Biennale (2016); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2009) and Yokohama Triennale (2001). In 2015, Shiota was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale.