Intricately weaving otherworldly installations and artworks out of stretched yarn, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is well renowned for her artistic exploration of deeply personal themes such as life, death, dreams and fears. To her, threads represent connections that develop infinitely into complex webs, hinting at the wider interconnectedness between human experiences and the universe. By arranging them into deliberate shapes and patterns, Shiota encourages viewers to actively engage with and challenge common perceptions of physical boundaries, and human existence.
Installation view at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, The Soul Trembles, 10 May ‐ 16 June 2021
Though less well known than her State of Being sculptural series or large-scale installations, Shiota’s works on paper form an integral part of the artist’s oeuvre. Notably, a number of her drawings were included in The Soul Trembles, her largest retrospective to date which travelled from the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo to Busan, Taipei, Shanghai, Brisbane and Jakarta. Differing from the use of abstraction and absence in her three-dimensional works, the artist’s drawings present a more visceral depiction of connections and emotions. In Face, the central figure in shrouded in dark shadows shaded with watercolour and pencil. Making use of black and red threads, Shiota not only adds volume to its flat surface, but physically traps the protagonist in a suffocating tangle of yarn. Hauntingly beautiful, the viewers too become trapped in the artist’s visions, entwined in the layered webs of tension, personal identity and anxiety.
"My creations with thread are reflections of my own feelings. A thread can be a cut, a knot or a loop, or can be loose or sometimes tangled. A thread to me is an analogy for feelings or human relationships. When using it, I do not know how to lie. If I weave something and it turns out to be ugly, twisted, or knotted, then such must have been my feelings when I was working." — Chiharu Shiota
Shiota was born in 1972 in Osaka, and currently works in Berlin after studying in both Japan and Germany. She represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions of her work includeSigns of Life (2023), Galerie Templon, New York;Invisible Line (2022), Aros Museum, Aarhus;Silent Word(2022), Schauwerk Sindelfingen; Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles (2021), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan and Long Museum, Shanghai
Provenance
Galerie Templon, Paris Private Collection Ravenel, Taipei, 4 June 2022, lot 18 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner