Chiharu Shiota at the Mori Museum

Shiota Chiharu
Accumulation – Searching for the Destination
2014/2019
Suitcase, motor and red rope | Dimensions variable
Courtesy: Galerie Templon, Paris/Brussels
Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019
Photo: Kioku Keizo  | Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Shiota Chiharu
Where Are We Going?
2017/2019
White wool, wire, rope
Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019
Courtesy: Galerie Templon, Paris/Brussels
Photo: Kioku Keizo

If you find yourself in Tokyo in the next month and don’t go to the expansive exhibit of Chiharu Shiota at the Mori Art Museum you will have no one to blame but yourself. The expansive, immersive show, “The Soul Trembles,” is one of the most transcendental exhibits I’ve experienced (and you do experience this one) in my life, and Shiota is surely one of the most exciting artists to have come out of Japan in recent memory.

Shiota is best known for large installation work where she takes over a space using thread, black, white, or red, and objects, such as a boat, keys, or burnt chairs, and creating an atmosphere that is fragile and touching. The concept of thread is relatively straightforward – thread represents the multileveled connections humans are subject to during their lives. In less skilled hands this could easily devolve into a cheesy, “we are all connected,” type of work, but Shiota is anything but unskilled. She has a talent for conjuring up images of fragility without being didactic or obvious. This is especially evident in one of the installation pieces, called “Connecting Small Memories,” in which dozens of pieces of tiny furniture sit on the floor connected by red thread. Again, while the concept may not require much thinking, the installation hits you on visceral level; something that could be found in a children’s store becomes art when handled by Shiota.

Keys, suitcases, boats, burned chairs, dresses – time and again Shiota employs these symbols of displacement, migration, belonging and longing to her own, inexorably human ends. Her work takes time – the complexity of installations is evident. There is a relentless effort in her art, even that from her early days. She fasted for three days for one of her performances pieces. For another one, she collected cow’s jaw bones from different butchers around Berlin, where she is based, then hauled them home and scraped the raw meat and sinew off them. You can’t say that’s not dedication to one’s art.

The Mori exhibit is Shiota’s biggest to date. Shiota was already making art for twenty-odd years and was prominent in the art circles before she stole the show at the 2015 edition of Venice Biennale with her installation “The Key in the Hand,” where red thread, intertwined with hundreds of old keys – keys as memories – exploded from two rustic boats and overtook the Japanese pavilion. Sadly, this installation was not recreated at the Mori exhibit, but there were several others that were just as engaging. One of them, where dozens of briefcases, some made mobile by integrated motors, were suspended from ceiling with a red thread, will be particularly touching for anyone who has suffered through displacement and migration. Shiota studied in Australia and lives in Germany, and immigration, though self-emposed in her case, and its attendant problems occupy a significant place in Shiota’s art. There should be more of it.

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Chiharu Shiota, “The Soul Trembles” at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo through Oct 27, 2019

All images courtesy of the artist and the museum.

Shiota Chiharu
In Silence
2002/2019
Burnt piano, burnt chair, Alcantara black thread | Dimensions variable
Production support: Alcantara S.p.A.
Courtesy: Kenji Taki Gallery, Nagoya/Tokyo
Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019
Photo: Sunhi Mang | Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Shiota Chiharu
Connecting Small Memories (detail)
2019
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019
Photo: Sunhi Mang
Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo