Selected Works & Awards

2020

Solo exhibition, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington

2019

The Soul Trembles (solo), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

2018

Solo exhibition, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

2018

Solo exhibition, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK

2015

56th Venice Biennale, The Japan Pavilion, Italy

2008

Solo exhibition, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan

2008

Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists, Japan

Exhibition

In this room, which used to be a room for anatomical specimens when this was a nursing school, works by Shiota Chiharu made of glass, thread, and wire are being exhibited along with specimens that remain in their glass cases. The experience of undergoing anti-cancer treatment for a recurrence of her ovarian cancer in 2017 gave rise to many works that were born from the extreme emotions and energy as Shiota confronted death, and this “Cell” series is one of them.

Whereas cancer, which is also a mass of cells that have become abnormal, tries to destroy its own body, and therefore life, where can the soul that governs the human spirit be found? This idea is connected to a fundamental question that has been a consistent theme in Shiotaʼs practice since the beginning: where do we come from, where are we going, and where is the boundary between life and death? Glass, with its threads and wires intertwined with each other like capillaries, can be seen either as a membrane that envelopes the cells inside it, or a vessel housing an invisible soul that is not part of the cells.

Shiota Chiharu studied under Muraoka Saburo at Kyoto Seika University before moving to Germany in 1996. She studied with performance art pioneer Marina Abramović, and has since been active internationally while based in Berlin, where memories of the division between East and West still persist. She first attracted attention at the inaugural Yokohama Triennale (Kanagawa, Japan) in 2001, and received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technologyʼs Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists, Japan in 2008. In 2015, she was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale in Italy.

In addition to the comprehensive solo exhibition Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, held at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2019 (currently touring the Asia-Pacific region), she has participated in more than 350 exhibitions and international biennales.

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Specimen Room, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio

Exhibition

The “saw-tooth roof” factories that make up the landscape of Ichinomiya symbolize the woolen textile industry that has sustained the region. Nokogiri2 is one such disused factory that has been given a new lease of life as a studio and gallery. Filling the gallery space is Shiota Chiharuʼs new work, Following the Line.

Shiotaʼs installations using red and black yarn make up one of her best-known series internationally today. The color red reminds us of the threads of fate that connect people, blood relations, or capillaries in the body. From the beginning, Shiota has tackled fundamental questions such as where we come from and where we are going, and where the boundary between life and death lies, expressing “a sense of presence within absence” that cannot be seen there. At this Triennale, she fuses the remaining woolen machines and yarn spool holders from Nokogiri2 into an installation using woolen yarn from Ichinomiya, reviving memories of the various lives, labor, and energy that used to live in this place.

Shiota Chiharu studied under Muraoka Saburo at Kyoto Seika University before moving to Germany in 1996. She studied with performance art pioneer Marina Abramović, and has since been active internationally while based in Berlin, where memories of the division between East and West still persist. She first attracted attention at the inaugural Yokohama Triennale (Kanagawa, Japan) in 2001, and received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technologyʼs Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists, Japan in 2008. In 2015, she was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale in Italy. In addition to the comprehensive solo exhibition Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, held at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2019 (currently touring the Asia-Pacific region), she has participated in more than 350 exhibitions and international biennales.

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Following the Line, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio