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 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; in 2019 she will be exhibiting at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
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.
