Chiharu Shiota
Threading the invisible
“I believe that we are all connected but these connections are invisible to our naked eye. I want to make them visible“
The name of Chiharu Shiota has become synonymous for her use of black and red threads in installations encompassing boats, dresses, musical instruments and furniture. The material is a device to explore ideas about travel, womanhood, human relationships, memories and absence in poetic works imbued with sensitivity.
This winter, Shiota is the first artist to have a solo exhibition in the Grand Palais following its renovation. Titled The Soul Trembles and organised with Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, it offers an overview of two decades of her career.
Born in Osaka in 1972, Shiota studied painting at Kyoto Seika University. Upon moving to Germany, she studied under Marina Abramović at HBK Braunschweig and under Rebecca Horn at Berlin University of the Arts. She represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and is based in Berlin.
Can you tell us why you titled your exhibition The Soul Trembles?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
When Mami Kataoka [director of the Mori Art Museum] came to visit me in Berlin in 2017 to invite me to exhibit a retrospective, I was so happy. But the next day I had a check-up at the doctor’s and he informed me that the cancer had returned. This meant that while I was preparing the exhibition, I also had to undergo surgery and chemotherapy. During this time, I was thinking a lot about death and my soul. My daughter was only nine years old and I thought, how can she grow up without a mother? The title was inspired by this time; it was the trembling of my own soul as I was living to survive to create this exhibition.
Out of My Body (2019/2024) reflects upon your experience of having cancer and chemotherapy. How did making the piece – the first using leather – help you deal with your illness?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
After my diagnosis, I felt as if I were on a conveyer belt. The first step was the surgery, followed by the chemotherapy. It was such a sterile system. I felt like my body was being taken apart, my soul and body separated. The leather is cut and my own body parts are scattered on the floor.
Usually, my installations are cut down and thrown away after the exhibition. I don’t mind because the artwork remains in the memory of the viewer. However, during this time, I wanted to work with materials that would remain after the exhibition and even after my own death.
You began making Connecting Small Memories (2019/2024), featuring hundreds of miniature household objects, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. What prompted this shift in scale?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
I was inspired to create this work when I was visiting the Mori Art Museum. It is on the 53rd floor overlooking Tokyo. There was a large window and you could see the whole city beneath; it was like looking at a miniature city. I wanted to connect the outside with the inside. But during the Covid 19 pandemic the meaning of this work also shifted a little. I was thinking about all of us sitting in our homes, every home like a little universe itself.
You began using threads in your performance/installation From DNA to DNA (1994) whilst still living in Japan. What did threads represent for you in your early pieces?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
In From DNA to DNA, the thread resembled the umbilical cord. During this time, I was inspired by this connection. The installation was on the ceiling and then the thread reached down to my body; I or the human was being reborn from the artwork.
From the beginning the meaning of the thread was the extension of a pencil line from a drawing. Now it is also more about the connection to people and that I am weaving memory like the neuron system of the brain.
Can you share a bit about your creative process and why using threads appeals to you?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
Creating these installations is like drawing in the air. Even though the exhibition space has become bigger in the last few years, I always want to follow the line. I only want to use the material, nothing else. For this reason, I only use very thin metal wires to enable me to attach the material onto the ceilings and sometimes the walls. If it’s possible, I usually just staple into the walls and floors. I want any other material to disappear so the viewer can only see the thread. I want it to look like a drawing, not a sculpture.
You’ve said that red represents the interior while black represents the exterior. Can you elaborate on what these two colours mean to you?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
The colour red is like blood and therefore resembles human relationships. In Japan, there is a legend that when a child is born, a red thread is tied around their little finger; this is an extension from a blood vessel of their heart to their finger. The red thread is then connected to the finger of another person. It is said that these people are destined to be in each others’ lives. I believe that we are all connected but these connections are invisible to our naked eye. I want to make them visible.
Black is more abstract. An accumulation of black thread forms a surface and I can then create unlimited spaces that gradually expand into a universe.
You’ve said that the intertwining and entangling of threads symbolises your mental state towards the complexity of human relationships. How has your interpretation of the material evolved?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
It is closely connected to my feelings when I’m weaving the installation. If I am more anxious, the thread is much more tangled. And when I am calm, the material is also calm. The single thread resembles all connections because the thread can be tense, tangled, broken off, loose or knotted just like relationships.
In Silence (2002/2024) grew from seeing a burnt piano outside your neighbour’s house following a fire when you were nine years old. What emotion do you feel today when you look at this piece?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
It was about my childhood experience but I created this artwork from my memory 20 years later. After I created the work, this trauma or moment was gone; I wasn’t carrying it within me anymore.
Over the years, you’ve made numerous works with dresses. In the exhibition, you are presenting Reflection of Space and Time (2018), two impeccable white dresses hanging in webs of black threads, separated from each other by a partition. Only one dress can be perceived at a time and is reflected by a mirror. What inspired this piece?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
There are two dresses but in the middle of the space is a mirror. At first glance people don’t notice this mirror; they think that the two dresses are side by side but it is just a reflection of one of the dresses. In reality, the other dress is hiding behind the mirror. It is like a trick or optical illusion.
We think we know what reality is but it is just a mirror of ourselves. When I look in the mirror, I often do not see what I feel. In this installation, this hull of a body may occupy this created room but it isn’t alone in this space. But we cannot see the truth directly; we have to look through something else, another perspective.
Several works deal with displacement, such as Accumulation – Searching for the Destination (2014/2024). What ideas inspired you?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
The suitcases are moving because they are ready to go, they want to travel. It also resembles the feeling we have before we travel, the excitement or the trembling of the soul. When I went to flea markets in Berlin, I found these old suitcases and when I opened them at home, I found an old newspaper from 1946 inside one of them and a packing list in the other. These items felt so familiar, I felt like I knew this person. I could feel their existence even though I have never met them. Every suitcase represents a person.
The idea was that the exhibition begins with Where Are We Going? and ends with Accumulation – Searching for the Destination. It is like a journey, from start to end.
Apparently, the building where you live and work was once occupied by the Stasi. How has that impacted your creative output?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
Yes, I have a small studio attached to my apartment where I only do my drawings. My main studio is in Wedding, a district of Berlin. It is around 400 square meters, where I prepare the material for the installations and where my team works from. Mainly I create the installations in the museum; my studio is more like a warehouse for the material.
My apartment building holds a lot of memories – it was a watching tower to secure the border between West and East Berlin. I am often inspired by Berlin itself and the scars of its history.
In 2003, you began conceiving stage sets for operas and plays. What new artistic possibilities and challenges did this open up?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
Normally as an artist, I work alone. But for the stage design, I have to work together with the lighting technician, the performers, directors and choreographers. We all have our separate sections but we still need to work together. This is completely different from creating an exhibition for a museum. This exchange of ideas to work towards a common goal makes it much more complex but it can create bigger things.
What other ambitions do you have?
CHIHARU SHIOTA:
None, I am an artist 24 hours every day. There isn’t much room for anything else
Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles is at the Grand Palais until March 19th, 2025.
Interview by Anna Sansom
Photos: Didier Plowy
