“My creations with thread are reflections of my own feelings. A thread can be a cut, a knot or a loop, or can be loose or sometimes tangled. A thread to me is an analogy for feelings or human relationships. When using it, I do not know how to lie. If I weave something and it turns out to be ugly, twisted, or knotted, then such must have been my feelings when I was working.”
— Chiharu Shiota
Globally renowned Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is celebrated for her sublime and spectacular stretched thread installations and artworks, in which she explores the relationship between personal and collective memories, the tangible and intangible, and the ephemeral and eternal. A single thread for Shiota represents the start of a connection, which can grow and develop in an uncountable number of ways to form both intricate and expansive universes that each pulsate with their own unique vibrations.
Trauma / Alltag (Kinderkleid) finds itself amongst the Trauma / Alltag sculpture series, in which the artist works with found objects such as clothes, books or keys. In this work, Shiota’s signature black threads envelope and penetrate the steel frame, densely wrapping the space around a white cotton dress that is an image commonly associated with childhood and innocence. Through thornbush-like dense threads, the outline of the white dress is vaguely perceived; it seems so close yet at the same time, tightly contained within a space that is just out of reach. Layered strings form a cocooning web, which act like a metaphor for the entanglements within our phyche where neither the beginning nor the end can be traced.
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“All my work is inspired by my life or by a personal emotion. I try to expand this emotion into something universal to connect with others. I have tried to express emotions in my art that I would never be able to explain.”
— Chiharu Shiota
Shiota's work has been featured in extensive exhibitions worldwide. In 2021, she has held multiple solo exhibitions in Japan, France, and Germany. This spring, Musée Guimet presened Chiharu Shiota's work in Carte blanche to Chiharu Shiota , which ran from 16 March - 6 June 2022.
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