Press release • October 2022
Chiharu Shiota, Out of My Body, 2020 Installation: leather, bronze, Galerie Templon, Paris, France Photo by Bertrand Huet Tutti, Courtesy Templon, Paris - Bruxelles. Copyright VISDA 2022 and the artist.
Presenting 6 major installations Invisible Line, immerses audiences in Shiota’s thread worlds. The exhibition explores Shiota’s abiding interest in mortality, memory, and the mysterious interconnections of life through the invisible lines that are weaved from experience.
“It is an exhibition of intensity, powerfully personal, uncompromising, compelling and encompassing the universal through the particular. Shiota’s works explore the life force which stretches between people, events and experience. There is tension everywhere in her work. As well as calm centre. We are very pleased to be able to present several different aspects of Shota’s oeuvre at ARoS” says Rebecca Matthews, director at ARoS.
Invisible Line brings attention to and discovers the importance of Shiota’s often humble yet always powerful drawing and painting. Recent works dealing with the artist’s contemplations on mortality, body and soul are included. One of Shiota’s most beautiful installations – Last Hope (2022)– is created for our wonderment and to lift our spirits. And one of her most direct and honest - Light in the Darkness (2018) – unflinchingly conveys Shiota’s struggle with the pain, loss and bereavement that is encountered during the trauma of cancer treatment.
About Chiharu Shiota
Born in Osaka, 1972. Currently based in Berlin.
Shiota’s inspiration often emerges from a personal experience or emotion which she expands into universal human concerns such as life, death and relationships. She has redefined the concept of memory and consciousness by collecting ordinary objects such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses, and engulfing them in immense thread structures. She explores this sensation of a ‘presence in the absence’ with her installations, but also presents intangible emotions in her sculptures, drawings, performance videos, photographs and canvases.
In 2008, she was awarded with ‘the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists, Japan’.
Her work has been displayed at international institutions worldwide including the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGoMA), Brisbane (2022); ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (2021); Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Art Gallery of South Australia (2018); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2018); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2017); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2015); Smithsonian Institution Arthur M.Sackler Gallery, Washington DC (2014); the Museum of Art, Kochi (2013); and the National Museum of Art, Osaka (2008) among others. She has also participated in numerous international exhibitions such as the Oku-Noto International Art Festival (2017); Sydney Biennale (2016); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2009) and Yokohama Triennale (2001). In 2015, Shiota was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale.
The exhibition has been made possible with the support of:
Press photos:
Press photos can be downloaded free of charge by indicating the name of the photographer.
For further information:
Anne Mette Thomsen: amt@aros.dk/ 2134 6010
Juliana Engberg: office@julianaengberg.net
Press: presse@aros.dk / 0045 2888 4464