Born in 1972 in the Japanese city of Osaka, Chiharu Shiota has been living and working in Berlin since 1997. Using woven yarn, the artist combines performance, body art and installations in a process that places at its center the body. Her protean artistic approach plays with the notions of temporality, movement and dreams, and demands a dual engagement from the viewer, both physical and emotional. In recent years, Chiharu Shiota has been widely exhibited around the world, including at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2003), the New Museum of Jakarta and the SCAD Museum of Art, USA (2017), the K21 Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (2014), the Smithsonian, Washington DC (2014) and Japan’s Kochi Museum of Art (2013). In 2015 Chiharu Shiota represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her installation The Key in the Hand. In 2018, she is exhibiting at the Museum of Kyoto; and in 2019 she exhibited at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo throught a exhibition illuminating the artist's entire works.
GROUP SHOW - Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today
As part of the group show Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today at the Moody Center for the Arts, Chiharu Shiota and Billie Zangewa will exhibit their works from January 13 to May 13, 2023.
The artists featured in the exhibition speak to contemporary issues of identity, gender, race, sexuality, and power through a medium with deep, multicultural roots that predate written history.
Moody Center for the Arts, Houston
From January 13 to May 13, 2023
SOLO SHOW - INVISIBLE LINE
The solo show "Invisible Line" by Chiharu Shiota has opened at the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark. The artist shows six large scale installations allowing the audience to dive into her distinctive universes.
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark
Through April 16, 2023
GROUP SHOW - JAPAN. BODY_PERFORM_LIVE
As part of the group exhibition JAPAN. BODY_PERFORM_LIVE at PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, the new installation Empty Body by Chiahru Shiota will be exhibited through February 12, 2023.
The exhibition investigates the Japanese contemporary art of the 2000s, focusing on how bodies and performances are connected to society, environment, materiality and technology.
Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan
Through February 12, 2023
SOLO SHOW – Silent Word
Chiharu Shiota has designed an installation made of interwoven threads especially for her new solo exhibition "Silent Words" at Schauwerk Sindelfingen in Germany. The installation with the same name fills the space with letters floating from a centered desk and chair into the sky, stretching over black ropes. The letters expand into the space like a universe of thoughts and emotions, but no one can hear them.
Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Germany
Through October 8, 2023
GROUP SHOW - BANGKOK ART BIENNALE
As part of the Bangkok Art Biennale, Chiharu Shiota is exhibiting her installation Eye of the Storm until February 13, 2023.
Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, Bangkok
From October 22, 2022 to February 13, 2023
SOLO SHOW - Circulating Memories
Chiharu Shiota's work is currently displayed in her new exhibition, Circulating Memories, in Oita at Beppu Project, Japan.
Beppu Project, Oita, Japan
Through October 16, 2022
INSTALLATION - STILL ALIVE, Aichi Triennale
Specimen Room 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.
Aichi Arts Center, Japan
From July 30 to October 10, 2022
INSTALLATION - Manifesta 14
For this installation, Shiota has chosen to work with red yarn, a colour she associates with blood, the body and human relationships. Into the vast entanglement of her “three-dimensional drawing”, the artist has woven personal stories of birth, childhood, family and country, religion, love and death. Each was written by someone from Kosovo.
Manifesta 14, Kosovo
From July 22 to October 30, 2022
SOLO SHOW - Living Inside
For its 14th Carte blanche to contemporary art, the Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet invites Chiharu Shiota. For her first solo exhibition in a museum in France, the artist addresses the shores of this new anxiety, that of the Covid era. With her threads, Chiharu Shiota weaves an inextricable protective network around a daily life that has become tiny; this scale, which is new in her work, refers to her experience, to the experience of all of us, of isolation in our homes.
Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris
From March 16, 2022 to June 6, 2022
In the beginning was… - Permanent work
Chiharu Shiota created a site-specific installation for the Planta Project "In the beginning was..." in the industrial complex of La Plana del Corb. The colours, shapes and textures of the environment inspired Shiota to use stone for the first time in one of her installations. She chose it as a material, not only because of the relationship with the landscape of Planta, but also for its link with the origin of the universe.
Planta Project, Complejo industrial La Plana del Corb, Balaguer, Lleida, Spain
The Soul Trembles - Solo exhibition
“The Soul Trembles” is the largest exhibition devoted to the internationally active artist Chiharu Shiota. On display are some one hundred works ranging from her 1990s output to her latest pieces. In addition to large-scale installation, there are sculptures, performance videos, photographs, drawings, and materials related to her stage design projects.
Among these works are large-scale installations in which black and red threads run through and envelop the entire space, constituting one of her most representative artwork series. The countless lines traced out in thread allude to various phenomena and a complex array of links and connections, while also beckoning us towards the deepest reaches of existence. At the root of these works lie Shiota’s incessantly-pursued themes of life and death, as well as a fundamental inquiry into what we all pursue in life, and where we are heading.
The subtitle of this exhibition, “The Soul Trembles,” refers to the emotional stirrings of the heart that cannot be put into words, in addition to being a manifestation of thoughts the artist hopes to convey to others.
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
No. 181, Sec. 3, Zhongshan N. Rd., Zongschan Dist., Taipei City, Taiwan
From May 1st to August 29, 2021
Direction of consciousness - solo exhibition
Chiharu Shiota presents her first solo exhibition at Chaumont-sur-Loire. She has created spaces that are bereft of any human presence, of any physical presence but where threads of memory, symbols of time are woven into a web that links inert objects to the past, to moments, to presences that now only exist in memory.
Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France
From April 2 to November 1, 2021
Chiharu Shiota « Memory of Water » - permanent work
For the 10th anniversary of the prohect “Arts Towada” that transforms the city into a museum of art, the Towada Art Center is replacing his permanent artwork and displaying the deposited works for the first time since its opening.
On this occasion, Chiharu Shiota will unveil the work “Memory of Water” on April 1st, 2021. This is part of a series of work using boat and threads that has been presented in other exhibitions in Japan and around abroad. It is Chiharu Shiota’s first permanent work in a public museum of art in Japan.
April 1st, 2021
Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan
“Connected to life” - solo exhibition
Chiharu Shiota’s inspiration often emerges from a personal experience or emotion, which she expands into universal human concerns such as life, death, and relationships.
The installation “Connected to life” consists of more than 50 hanging beds that cascade from the ceiling to the floor. The flow of life, which suddenly came to an end for so many because of the Corona virus with its many deaths, is present in the installation through the blood flowing through the tubes just as blood flows through the human body. Reminding us metaphorically that “the world today is a hospital” (Peter Weibel), the installation conveys a lightness that veils the weight of the subject.
Zentrum für Kunst und Medium (ZKM), Lorenzstrasse 19, Karlsruhe (Germany)
From March 17 to July 11, 2021
“The web of time” - permanent displays
“I want the viewer to reflect on their inner self, on their life – past, present, and future…” – Chiharu Shiota
In “The web of time”, countless intertwined strands connect numbers across time and space. The installation which is part of the Te Papa museum’s permanent collection creates the vision of a night sky studded with constellations of numbers. These numbers – scattered like stars in the night sky – represent meaningful dates in history, both collective and personal. As Chiharu Shiota says, “Numbers confort us. We share dates that are important to us, and they help us understand ourselves.”
permanent displays
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 55 Cable Street, Wellington
Linhas da Vida – Solo Show
The Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil - Rio de Janeiro is the last location of the touring exhibition of Chiharu Shiota "Linhas da Vida", that has been traveling since beginning of 2020 through Brazil. It is the first extensive solo exhibition presented in the country, showing works spanning over 25 years of artistic career. The exhibition includes the site-specific installations "Beyond Memory", "Two Boats, One Direction" and "Internal Line".
From January 13rd to April 19th, 2021
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro, R. Primeiro de Março, 66 - Centro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Chiharu Shiota: The web of time – Solo show
The web of time, an installation by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, is part of Te Papa's permanent collection. This installation creates a vision of a night sky studded with constellations of numbers representing significant dates in history, both collective and personal.
Starting December 12, 2020
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 55 Cable Street, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
SLEEPING: LIFE WITH ART – FROM GOYA AND RUBENS TO CHIHARU SHIOTA – Group show
The exhibition presents about 120 works by 33 artists from many different times and places, and a wide range of genres, including painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, sculpture, and video. The spectator is invited to question the way in which each work highlights the theme of sleeping.
From November 25, 2020 to February 23, 2021
The National Museum of Modern Art, 3-1 Kitanomaru-koen, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8322, Japan
PUSH THE LIMITS – Group show
PUSH THE LIMITS is a project that investigates how art takes itself to the limit to move the horizon of thinking, perception and speech ever further in order to introduce new elements. The guest artists take this opportunity to reaffirm the urgency of unleashing the infinity of possibles.
From September 7, 2020 to March 11, 2021
Fondazione Merz, via Limone 24, 10141 Turin, Italy
OH! MY CITY – group show
PARADISE ART SPACE’s newest exhibition, ‘OH! MY CITY’ explores the various ways to interpret period and space in the city. Featuring 5 artists with strong individual characteristics, this exhibition presents a novel perspective on how to look at a city space and a good chance to reinterpret ‘My City.’ Presenting artists are Anibal Catalan, duo-group, Elmgreen & Dragset, Baekyung Lee, Chiharu Shiota, and Pablo Valbuena.
From June 18 to October 4, 2020
Paradise Art Space,186, Yeongjonghaeannam-ro 321-giln Jung-gu, Incheon, Korea
Internal Line – Solo Show
Until February 2020, Japan House - São Paulo is presenting Chiharu Shiota's new work, Internal Line. Inspired by Japanese folklore, the work refer to the legend saying that a red thread tied to the finger of a newly born child runs from the heart to fingertips and intertwines with others' thread, connecting them to each other.
JAPAN HOUSE, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL
November 13, 2019 - February 2, 2020
Lifelines – Solo Show
Chiharu Shiota's body of work is celebrated in the retrospective exhibition Linhas da Vida (Lifelines), on view this fall at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil - São Paulo.
The exhibition presents seminal works by the artist, including The Key in the Hand (2015) and the brand new work Além da Memória (2019), inspired by the diversity of the Brazilian people and the historical architecture of the CCBB-SP.
CENTRO CULTURAL BANCO DO BRASIL, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL
November 13, 2019 - January 27, 2020
Me Somewhere Else - Solo show
Presented in the Bernheim room, Me Somewhere Else (2018), a work of great visual strength, occupies a very special place in the artist's production. Shiota talks about her fight against her illness, and the certainty that her mind will survive her body.
ROYAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS OF BELGIUM, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
From 11/10/2019 to 09/02/2020
COUNTING MEMORIES – solo show
Talented Chiharu Shiota laid her artistic web entitled ‘Counting memories’ in a polish museum, in Katowice.
The immersive works gives a tangible perception of the universe, as the artist explains : “With this installation, I want to visualize the universe within this space. A massive cloud of intertwined lines fills the room; it floats above a collection of nine tables and chairs. The network holds hundreds of white numbers like stars in the night sky.”
From September 7, 2019 to October 4, 2020
Muzeum Slaskie, Dobrowolskiego 1 40-205 Katowice, Poland
Créatrices, l’émancipation par l’art - Group show
This major feminist exhibition dedicated to the women artists favors a thematic approach over a long period, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The exhibition brings together more than 80 works highlighting the emancipatory function of art, like Niki de Saint Phalle who gave power to the “Nanas”, her majestic female figures.
MUSEE DES BEAUX-ARTS, RENNES, FRANCE
From 28/06/2019 to 29/09/2019
The Soul Trembles - Solo show
The exhibtion The Soul trembles will be the largest-ever solo exhibition by Chiharu Shiota. This will be the first opportunity to experience in detail twenty-five years of Shiota’s oeuvre; primarily in six large installations, plus sculptural works, video footage of performances, photographs, drawings, performing arts-related material, etc.
MORI ART MUSEUM, TOKYO, JAPAN
From 20/06/2019 to 27/10/2019
Line of Thought - Solo show
Chiharu Shiota originally studied painting in Kyoto. She completed her studies in Berlin with Marina Abramovic and Rebecca Horn, whose influence is notable particularly in Shiota’s early works. She explores subjects such as memory and forgetting, presence and absence of the body as well as the interwoven and multi-faceted nature of human relationships.
All of her works form poetic, pulsating bodies within space and have a direct connection with her earlier performances. To Shiota, the threads and their interweaving also symbolize the extension of life beyond the body, such as in sleep and dreams, in thought and imagination – invisible connections that her webs make visible.
MUSEUM SINCLAIR-HAUS, BAD HOMBURG, GERMANY
From 31/03/2019 to 16/09/2019
And Berlin Will Always Need You. Art, Craft and Concept Made in Berlin -
Group show
The Gropius Bau explores the concept of crafts and handmade processes in Berlin’s contemporary art scene, taking its history as a former museum for decorative arts and educational institution as a starting point.
Multiple aspects come into focus when looking at the selection of works exhibited, ranging from the ornamental and decorative, which is reminiscent of visual motifs found in Eastern religions and Byzantine mosaics, to the history of design in Modernism and the twentieth-century, involving craftsmanship from Berlin to South America.
The exhibition shows the incredible variety of artistic practices that can be found in Berlin today and demonstrates the Gropius Bau’s commitment to continue to provide a regular platform for Berlin artists.
GROPIUS BAU, BERLIN, GERMANY
From 22/13/2019 to 16/06/2019
Honolulu Biennale 2019
TO MAKE WRONG / RIGHT / NOW
The title for this year’s Honolulu Biennial is drawn from the poem Manifesto by participating Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) artist 'Imaikalani Kalahele.
Honolulu Biennial 2019 features 47 artists and artist collectives from Hawai’i and the countries and continents linked by the Pacific.
Honolulu Biennale, HONOLULU, HAWAÏ
From 08/03/2019 to 5/05/2019
In Fact - group show
Elgiz Museum presents a new selection from the collection: In Fact. The exhibition focuses on the concepts of representation and the act of referring. In Fact includes works of different media and investigates the models of representation through the referred. How do we re-evaluate the increasingly impossible act of representation in the current post-truth era we face today; through constructed identities and the perception of social identity? The hollow dress titled State of Being by Chiharu Shiota, who represented the Japanese Pavillion at the previous Venice Biennale, bundles up a reality we know that exists, but is indescribable.
With : Ragip Basmazolmez, Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, Tracey Emın, Ozlem Günyol, Liu Chun Hai, Thomas Houseago, Bengü Karaduman, Ihsan Oturmak, Jım Shaw, Cındy Sherman, Chıharu Shıota, Tunca, Hale Tenger, Gavın Turk, Erwın Wurm, Pan Yue.
ELGIZ MUSEUM, ISTANBUL, TURKEY
From 5/12/2017 to 30/04/2018
« The Raft. Art is (not) Lonely » - group show
« The Raft. Art is (not) Lonely » will bring together 73 international artists in Oostende chosen by curators Jan Fabre and Joanna De Vos and will present 52 new creations of young and experienced artists. The exhibition discusses the artist's quest and the duality of the creation, based on isolation and engagement. Artists from different generations and different paths were invited to question the link between « Le radeau de la méduse » (1818) of Théodore Géricault and Jan Fabre's work « Le Radeau est (pas) solitaire (1986) ».
The curators have the intention to stimulate the city in order to make it (re)discovered. Besides the well-known museum, they looked for more unsual places like the Peperbusse restaurant, le
Palais de Justice, the Eurpacentrum building, the stables of the Wellington track race or the crypts of the Sint-Jozef church.
« The Raft. Art is (not) Lonely » will be an artistic journey disseminated in 22 places of the « City by the sea » .
OSTENDE, BELGIUM
From 21/10/17 to 15/04/18
In good times and in bad. How to operate - group show
How can art endure, age, change? How can the museum design and cultivate relationships with artists, as well as with private and public partners? Indeed, how can it use and enrich the history of its own collection? How can the collection be developed and extended in future? Both in good times and in bad? A new special exhibition will address these questions, focussing in particular on one influential feature of the museum as a public site: it undertakes a responsibility over a long period, promoting discourse and fostering connections and relationships.
Five artists from the contemporary collection – Monika Baer, Katharina Grosse, Svenja Kreh, Chiharu Shiota and Georg Winter – were asked for suggestions regarding which artist or which work they consider to a be fitting counterpart for their work. Not only does the Museum für Neue Kunst listen to these opinions, it also accords them a lot of weight. What has emerged from these consultations are a number of exciting and unusual connections, dissonances and collaborations which will be on show for a period of six months.
This experimental format permits the museum to reflect upon its collection and readjust the paradigms and perspectives that attend it. At the same time, it represents an opportunity for a fresh approach to the museum's duties: collecting, conserving, researching, exhibiting and educating.
Curated by Christine Litz & Elena Frickmann
MUSEUM FÜR NEUE KUNST, FREIBURG, GERMANY
From 14/10/2017 to 15/04/2017
Lost Words
Chiharu Shiota presents a major new site specific installation in Berlin’s oldest church, Nikolaikirche, ’Lost Words’, relating to the 500th anniversary of Protestant Reformation and commissioned by the capital’s museum Stadtmuseumberlin
NIKOLAIKIRCHE, BERLIN
From 29/09/17 to 10/11/17
“In spring 2017, as Le Havre marks its 500th anniversary, visual artists, designers, graphic artists, stage directors, novelists, will follow in the wake of Niemeyer and Monet to reinterpret this surprising city.
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota has been invited to invest architect Auguste Perret’s famous St Joseph Church. A whirlpool of red threads densely woven, irradiate the church concrete nave . An "Accumulation of power » which, as a black hole, grasps the spiritual powers concentrated in the buildings.
“A church is a place also for spiritual energy even for people who are not religious. In my mind, every person in life has his/her own place of power. The red whirlpool construction embodies an accumulation of spiritual power.
In this construction, all ideas, thoughts and prayers of people having been in the church are accumulated, like in a storm » the artist explains.
Artistic director of A Summer in Le Havre : Jean Blaise.
On the 9th of March 2017, the Cultural Institute Bernard Magrez, leading centre for arts and culture in Bordeaux, pays tribute to Daniel Templon through an important exhibition organised at the Château Labottière.
With over 600 exhibitions and 250 artists, the world-renowned French galerist, always knew to pay particular attention to the artistic avant-garde.
The exhibition, portrays Daniel Templon, pioneer and major figure of the art world, featuring five major artists of his gallery, offering different artistic styles: Philippe Cognée, Jan Fabre, Pierre et Gilles, Yue Minjun and Chiharu Shiota.