Chiharu Shiota

Heir of Ana Mendieta and a whole generation of feminist artists form the early 70’s, Chiharu Shiota works with her body as an intervention space, realizing performances that deal with our link with the earth, the past and the memory.

Well known for her installations with thread as main material, her symmetric tangles captivate the spectator at first sight, creating feelings that go between safety and fear, fascination and ugliness, while awakening memories, and both absence and existence as philosophical matters.

The presence and absence of her body is the thread running through her work, and ultimately is what makes it possible to understand her confrontation with the question of defining the artwork, the artistic subject and the public, the interior and exterior space.
In Shiota’s philosophy the true artwork is created only when the expectations for familiar artistic forms of expression are abandoned in favor of a perception of things that get by without any attributions of meaning.

She has exhibited at institutions such as Gropius Bau, Mori Art Museum, Jameel Art Centre, Gottesborg Museum, The Art Gallery of South Australia, Louisiana Museum, Kiasma, Hayward Gallery, Fundación Sorigué, Palazzo Reale Milano, The Museum of Kyoto, Maison Rouge, MONA Museum, and Mattress Factory, among others.

She represented Japan at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale. Additionally, she has designed the scenography for the opera Matsukaze alongside Sasha Waltz and for Tristan and Isolde at KielTeater.

Her work is part of collections such as the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Fundación Sorigué, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Kiasma, among others.