Covering over three decades of creative output, and organized in collaboration with the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, the exhibition pays tribute to the poetic and sensitive work of this internationally renowned visual artist, lauded for her performances and immersive installations made with red, black or white thread. The MMFA will host the North American debut of the exhibition’s international tour.

Since the mid-1990s, Chiharu Shiota has been a major figure of international contemporary art. However, she stands apart for her singular visual language conveyed from the interlacing of thread and the symbolic weight of objects. The exhibition offers an intricate exploration of the artist’s inner world in a narrative woven together from eight monumental installations, sculptures, photographs, drawings, performance videos and archival documents of her theatre work. Following Turin, Paris, Jakarta, Shanghai and Taipei, just to mention a few, the MMFA will be the tenth venue to present Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles.

Chiharu Shiota’s immersive installations, which will occupy the large galleries of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, are site-specific, shaped in response to the spaces they inhabit. Like drawing in space, she weaves and intertwines her webs by hand, in situ, in a performative, repetitive, and meditative process of creation. Reborn with each iteration, these works represent the impermanent nature of existence, a premise that guides Shiota’s sensibilities. The exhibition is being installed by Chiharu Shiota’s team with the support of a local team of assistants, including art students from Concordia University.

As visitors walk up the stairs towards the exhibition, they will be greeted by Where Are We Going? (2017/2026), an installation suspended from the ceiling composed of boats that are filled with sheets of white thread. A recurring theme in Shiota’s work, boats symbolize the journey of life, displacement, immigration and the search for belonging.

The exhibition begins with a chronology of Chiharu Shiota’s artistic career. Through paintings, documentary photographs of performances and installations, videos and drawings, this gallery traces the evolution of her production from its beginnings. The second gallery will present several bodies of work, including a deeply personal piece Shiota created in response to her second cancer diagnosis in 2017. Her emotional state is powerfully conveyed in Out of My Body (2019), a suspended installation composed of fishnet-cut red leather and bronze casts of her limbs. With her disassembled body preserved as a material remnant of her existence, she hopes to leave behind a permanent trace, her memory destined to remain forever.

Also in this gallery will be Connecting Small Memories (2019/2026), a mixed-media installation comprising miniature objects that the artist collected over the years or purchased at flea markets in Berlin. By constructing a tiny world with these once-abandoned objects, many interlaced with red thread, Shiota alludes to the interconnectedness of the world at large.

Occupying the entire central gallery, the immersive and iconic installation Uncertain Journey (2016/2026) is composed of six metal boats set on the floor that invite visitors to navigate their own way through. Red thread sprouts a canopy of webs on parts of the gallery walls and on the ceiling. The fourth gallery will host Reflection of Space and Time (2018), an upright, metallic structure housing mirrors and two floating white dresses veiled by black thread. This installation will be activated by the viewers; they will become part of the work as the mirrors reflect back their image.

The last gallery contains In Silence (2002/2026), an immersive installation composed of black thread, a piano and chairs. This work was inspired by a childhood memory of a burned piano that was discarded outside Shiota’s neighbour’s home after a fire. She noted that while it had lost its sound and function, the instrument retained its beauty. Having often been confronted with the fragility of life, Shiota hopes to make us feel the trembling of her soul in order to remind us of our own vulnerability.

– Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and Iris Amizlev, Curator of Special Projects at the MMFA and responsible for the Montreal presentation.

An exhibition organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.