Chiharu Shiota


Trauma-Daily (detail of the installation), 2006
(iron construction, cotton thread, clothes)

Densely criss-crossed black cotton thread cutting the air like a razor and incising particular objects has formed a characteristic part of Chiharu Shiota's installations and performances for quite some time. The white figures point to the presence of the soul, as they are inescapably captured in the blackness of entwinements symbolising anxiety, fear and dread. The work entitled Trauma/Alltag, is highly personally expressive – just like previous similar works by Shiota. "Without my fear I might not be able anymore to make any art, and when I can no longer make any art, I will become still more afraid ... I only want to know why I am sometimes so unhappy," Shiota wrote in one of her catalogues. The vertical phantom-like figures in the work Trauma/Alltag hint at a mother with two daughters; they convey optimism, which is even emphasised by the mirrors turned outwards and suggesting the free pole of the chaotic world in which we are sometimes caught. It is precisely this captivity, however, that invests the highly subtle artwork with a tone of reality, in which fears – when looked directly in the face – present an element, or driving force, of survival. The work is a metaphor of captivity, which every human faces now and then regardless of how bright the star above him/her is.

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Born in 1972 in Osaka (Japan). Between 1992 and 1996 she studied at the Kyoto Seika University. In 1994 she attended a semester course at the Art School in Canberra (Australia). Between 1997 and 1999 she studied at the High School for Fine Arts in Braunschweig (Germany) under Professor Marina Abramović.

Solo exhibitions (selection):

2006 Dialogue from DNA, Wildnis + Kunst, Saarbrücken
2005 When Mind Become Form, Gallery Fleur, Kyoto Seika University, Kyoto
2004 Du côté de chez, St Mary Church, Lille
In Silence, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima
2003 Dialogue from DNA, installation, Centre for Contemporary Art, castle Ujazdowski, Warsaw
2002 In Silence, installation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart

Group exhibitions (selection):

2007 Fiction for the Real, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
2006 Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Fever Variations, 6th Gwangju Biennale 2006, Gwangju City
2005 Dreaming Now, Rose Art Museum, Waltham
Parallel Realities: Asian Art Now, 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka
2004 Embroidered Action, Herzliya Museum of Art, Herzliya
The joy of My Dreams, 1. International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Sevilla
2003 First Steps: Emerging Artists from Japan, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Philip Morris K.K. Art Award 2002, New York
2001 MEGA-WAVE, Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama
Marking The Territory, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

www.chiharu-shiota.com