Threading her way through life

When Japanese artist Shiota Chiharu presented her first retrospective exhibition The Soul Trembles at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2019, eager enthusiasts formed long lines on the street as they waited patiently to get in.

Wang Wei, director of the Long Museum in Shanghai, was visiting the Japanese museum at that time and was intrigued by Shiota's art, and impressed with her expression of intangible things: memories, anxiety, dreams and more. Wang then asked the director of the Mori Art Museum to help bring the exhibition to China. Two years later, the exhibition opened at the Long Museum West Bund on Dec 19, featuring more than 80 artworks by the 49-year-old artist.

"This is the first large-scale showcase on the Chinese mainland of Shiota that covers all the important stages of her creative practice since 1996," Wang told local media before the opening.

Shiota was born in Osaka in 1972 and is currently based in Berlin. She decided to become a painter at the age of 12, though during her art studies in Australia she stopped painting and turned to performance and installation art.

In 2008, she received the Art Encouragement Prize for new artists from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In 2015, she was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Her work often develops from a personal experience or emotion, which she expands to universal human concerns, such as life, death and relationships, curator of the exhibition Kataoka Mami, who is also director of the Mori Art Museum, said in a video message.

Shiota came to Shanghai with her team from Germany and Japan and they spent 21 days in quarantine first, so as to set up her exhibition themselves. Her works, especially her most famous cobweb-like installations, are room-size structures that involve large quantities of thread. It took more than 100 workers and 16 days to put up all exhibits.

The first exhibit, an installation named Uncertain Journey alone used up 280,000 meters of red wool yarn. The threads seem to emerge from several metal frames of boats, then rise and spread to take up a whole exhibition hall. The visitors step into the space, surrounded by red webs, feeling as if lost on a sea of blood.

"I have tried to present my artwork with emotions that I can't express with words," Shiota said, guiding media during a preview of the show on Dec 18.

The artist suffered from cancer in 2005, and in 2017 she had a relapse.

The illness and treatment made her feel "like different parts of my body were all falling off and breaking into pieces", she says, explaining the theme of the exhibition. "The experience made me think a lot about why we live, what is it that we are after when we embark on the journey of life?"

Her other installations also involve large quantities of thread tied to objects such as white dresses, used suitcases, shoes and even a burned piano. Using threads of different colors and texture, she stretches them throughout the space, evoking an emotional response in the audience.

"To me the threads are tied together like neurons in our brain that represent memories and cognition, and connections between people," she says.

One installation named Accumulation－Searching for the Destination is made up of more than 400 oscillating suitcases hung from red threads. Inspired by a sheet of old newspaper in a suitcase she found in Berlin, she became fascinated with old suitcases and started to collect them 10 years ago. Used suitcases represent a person's memory, movements and the journey of their life, she says.

The exhibition includes her sculptures, early-age paintings, photographs and video footage of performances.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made traveling and other aspects of life difficult for people all over the world, and being able to present the exhibition in Shanghai made her especially happy and grateful, Shiota says. "I hope people can still experience the power of creativity, and get strength from art."

Long Museum expects the exhibition to be its most popular show this year, and has kept it open on weekends, too. According to Shanghai's pandemic control protocol, the museum must take measures to cap its number of visitors at 4,000 at one time.

If you go

Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles

Dec 19-March 3. 10 am-5:30 pm (last entry at 4:30 pm), Tuesday-Thursday; 10 am-8 pm (last entry at 7 pm), Friday-Sunday. Long Museum West Bund, 3398 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui district, Shanghai. 021-6422-7636.