▲ In 2020, Chiharu Shiota in his studio Photo / Shiota Chiharu Studio Photo / Sunhi Mang
Shiota, who is obsessed with collecting old objects, believes that objects leave traces of the existence of the soul. "The man is not here, but here is his 'presence', which is at the heart of many of my works."
"When weaving works, I often use threads to cover the ceiling first, then the walls, connecting the two, and when the threads are dense enough, I connect them to the ground. Finally, I would follow a separate line to find its beginning and tail, and if I couldn't find it, the piece would be finished. At that moment, I felt as if I could glimpse the sky and touch the truth. ”
This article was first published in Southern People Weekly
Text / Southern People Weekly reporter Li Naiqing from Shanghai
"In my work, red lines connect blood and life, and black lines touch the night sky and the universe."
Stepping into the quiet and empty exhibition hall, thousands of red threads are woven into a giant installation "The Journey of the Unknown", and a red mist rises in front of your eyes, passing through it, like a dream...
▲The Journey of Knowing 2016/2019 Metal Frame, Red Wool Photo/Mori Art Museum Photo/Sunhi Mang
From December 19, 2021 to March 6, 2022, the Long Museum (West Bund) launched the exhibition "Chiharu Shiota: A Fluttering Soul", which selects about 80 of her works from the 1990s to the present, including several masterpieces of giant installations and related sculptures, videos, paintings, stage design drawings, etc., comprehensively reviewing the Japanese female artist's creative career over the past 25 years.
"The threads become entangled, intertwined, broken, and scattered, and they constantly reflect my inner world, but also express the various states of relationships between people."
▲Where are we going? 2017/2021 White Wool, Wire, Rope Photo by Guan-Ming Lin Photo courtesy of VG Bild-Kunst and Chiharu Shiota, Bonn, Germany (Note: Non-exhibited works at the Long Museum)
The line is a highly symbolic material in the works of the Yantian installation. "I paint in the air," she said with a smile on her face. Bright red or pitch-black intertwined lines run through the space, alluding to the intricate connection of various things and calling the viewer to contemplate the meaning of existence. The essence of these works comes from the proposition that the artist has always paid attention to: what exactly do we pursue in life, and where will we go?
Back in 2017, Shiota received an invitation from the Mori Museum of Art in Tokyo to prepare a solo retrospective, but the day after receiving the invitation, she discovered that the cancer she had diagnosed 12 years earlier had recurred. The fight against the disease deepened Shiota's thinking about spirit and flesh, and in the process she completed two years of preparation, and finally named the exhibition "Fluttering Souls", an indescribable inner shock, through thousands of lines of red and black, weaving stirring emotions and deep thoughts - "This is my first exhibition so close to death, let me rethink life and death." ”
▲ Exhibition scene: "Chiharu Shiota: A Trembling Soul", Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019 Photo / Mori Art Museum Photo / Sunhi Mang
A lifeline that wraps around the body
Chiharu Shiota was born in 1972 in Osaka, Japan. At the age of 5, the little girl with a paintbrush against her face created watercolor "Butterfly on the Sunflower": an orange butterfly full of dynamic beauty leaning on the bright sunflower. In the upper left corner of the picture, she creatively presents her name in a mirror form, the childish word "spring" seems to be a point for the painting, and she herself, like the free butterfly, begins to dance lightly on the road of art - "Ah, it turns out that I drew before I learned to write, obviously, but I forgot." ”
At the age of 12, Shiota made a decision: "I want to be an artist in the future, and I don't want to do anything else." ”
From 1992 to 1996, Shiota studied at the Fine Arts Department of Kyoto Seigo University and worked as an assistant to artist Saburo Muraoka in the Sculpture Department. "Even if we can choose anything as the subject of the painting, creating an abstract painting is still a challenge for me. All I could see was the color, and the rolling enthusiasm in the creative process could only be hidden in the painting and eventually disappeared from the field of vision. In her freshman year of college, Shiota created her last oil painting, Untitled, "I was frustrated with the idea of art where technique precedes connotation, and although I manipulated these time-honored painting materials, I could no longer stand the frivolity I was creating." ”
During his university studies, Yantian studied as an exchange student at the Australian National University College of Arts in Canberra. After giving up oil painting, she once fell into confusion, lifted the brush, or even just drew a line. Her hands also couldn't depict order, space, and "breathing," so she created the installation "A Line" out of bean shells, which she picked up the empty bean shells scattered across the campus, glued them to paper, and drew a line on them. "In the process, I found a pleasure in drawing a line without any skill."
▲ "In the Hand" Photo/ Sen Art Museum Photo / Suhni Mang
During his study in Australia, Shiota also practiced the performance art "Becoming a Painting" with a clear attitude. One day, according to her recollection, "I dreamed of becoming a painting and wondered: How do I move my body in a painting to become a masterpiece?" The surface of my body was covered with oil paint, making it difficult for me to breathe. That night, I became part of the work. A few days later, Shiota hung the canvas on the wall, half-wrapped his body, and drizzled it with bright red enamel paint to blend himself into the canvas. "Becoming a Painting" is "a kind of liberation" for her to break free from the shackles. "Less skillful and less careful, this is the first time I have put myself into it all and expressed it with my body."
Whether it is the oil painting "Untitled" or the performance art "Becoming a Painting", blood red dominates, in fact, this color that is closely related to the characteristics of life is repeatedly presented in Yantian's works. In 1994, when "From Genes to Genes" was exhibited at the school, Yantian lay on the ground, his whole body was wrapped in blood-red wool, and a few strands of wool were like an umbilical cord wrapped around the ceiling, which was made of cardboard, cloth, wire and other materials, all of which were painted bright red. "It's my first device to search for materials on my own, and it feels like it's open from traditional two-dimensional space. A new me was born from this work, will the inheritance of DNA affect the brains of art creators? That's what I was thinking about day and night. ”
▲Beyond Memory 2019 Wood, Paper Photography / Sunhi Mang Photo courtesy of: VG Bild-Kunst and Chiharu Shiota, Bonn, Germany (Note: Non-works exhibited at the Long Museum)
At the age of 19, Shiota visited a solo exhibition by Polish performance art master Marina Abramovich and was inspired to go to Europe. After a long and complex application, she enrolled at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts in 1996, studied with Abramovich at the Brunswick University of the Arts from 1997 to 1998, and then studied under Rebecca Horn at the Berlin University of the Arts, and has since been living in Berlin, where she has been involved in art exhibitions.
While traveling in Iceland in 2001, the salt pans passed by a magical landscape: steam rising, scalding magma turning into hard rock... In order to "perceive the original vitality of the earth", in this natural wonder, she wrapped her body tightly with a red thread and created a performance art work "Untitled". At that moment, she felt completely one with nature, "after returning to Berlin, looking at the people, I could no longer understand why they lived." ”
Ten years later, when Yantian took photographs of subjects such as the Berlin Wall and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, he likened the boundaries of family, ethnicity and religion to walls, showing "the existence of human beings who cannot cross these walls." "In my creation, I feel the rich meaning of red, the red line expresses the connection between people, reminiscent of blood. The work involves important messages such as human beliefs, untouchable boundaries, warnings, etc., which I will also express in red. ”
In the 3 minutes and 39 seconds video "Wall", Shiota asks questions about the wall that is "bound" by herself: in the background sound of the fetal heartbeat, she turns the commonly used red line into a thin plastic tube, in which bright red pigments symbolizing blood flow, and these externalized "blood vessels" are intertwined with the body lying on the ground, which looks shocking. In fact, in this work, Shiota incorporates his own personal experiences of illness, pregnancy, miscarriage, and childbirth.
"The mind and body are gradually separated from each other, and I can no longer stop these uncontrollable emotions. I scattered my body into pieces and talked to it in my head. Somehow, I understood what it meant to connect my body to these red lines. In 2019, Yantian built a giant installation , The Externalized Body , in blood-red cowhide and bronze , to confront the sick bodies suffering from cancer , " Expressing these emotions and giving them forms always involves the destruction of the soul." ”
Weave memories from the depths of silence
Worn old scales, rusty wheels, discarded dolls, stones, nuts, model houses from the former East Germany, and more than seventy small bottles picked up...
At the exhibition site, a 2003 video gives the viewer a glimpse of Yan tian's studio in Berlin, a secret space of her own. "My studio is stuffed with 'garbage' that coexists with me and, by chance, every day of my daily life, they continue to impress me."
Shiota is good at appropriating ordinary objects to capture and store the breath of memories. In her 1999 work "After That," she sewed a 7-meter-long skirt by hand, hanging a long skirt covered in mud on the wall, letting the water flow from the top shower. "The dress expresses the absence of the body. No matter how many times it is washed, the memories from someone's skin cannot be washed away. The work was then exhibited at the first Yokohama Triennial under the title Memories of skin (2001), where a large-scale installation poured water onto a 13-meter-long skirt stained with mud, making Shiota famous in the Japanese art world at the age of 29 at the time.
Shiota often uses clay in his works to symbolize posthumous fate and the origin of life. "When I was a kid, I went to my grandparents' house in Kochi Prefecture every summer. I still remember the touch on my hands and the fear in my hands when I visited the graves of my ancestors and pulled out the weeds from the graves. "According to Shiota, this was the first time she was terrified of death." Imagining that I might hear my grandmother breathing while pulling weeds terrified me. ”
Shiota explores the connection of life with a red thread, and when fear and tremor strike, the thread in her hand turns black.
▲ "In Silence" Photo/ Sen Art Museum Photo / Suhni Mang
The giant installation "In Silence" (2002/2021) on the exhibition site is covered with endless black lines. Passing through the dark arcades of suffocating black lines, at the end stands a charred piano in the center, which is also wrapped in dense black lines, exuding loneliness and poignancy in anxiety.
"When I was nine years old, there was a fire in the house next door. The next day, there was a piano standing quietly outside the house, burned black, and the memory was more beautiful than before. An indescribable silence enveloped me. Over the next few days, as the wind blew that burning breath through the window into the house, I felt my voice begin to blur. ”
Shiota weaves a concert engulfed in fire, and despite the absence of the performers and listeners, dense black lines connect the inner universe of man with the outside world, and the charred piano symbolizes a transformation of some kind of existence. "Something goes deep into my head... They are formless soul beings. The more you think about them, the easier it is for their voices to disappear from my mind, but the more shapes they exist. ”
Shiota hopes to shape his soul with the thread in his hand. In the 3 years since moving to Germany, she has moved nine times, her life is uncertain, she began to knit wool in her bedroom, and in 1999 she completed her first "bed" installation. In 2002, she created the famous work "Sleep", in which thousands of black lines are intertwined around the side of the single bed of the steel pipe, and the 24 women on the bed turn over at will and sleep peacefully, and countless black lines occupy the entire exhibition hall, creating a breathtaking force and beauty. "The lines envelop the whole space like a cocoon. I would like to say that a sleeping person occupies the gap between dream and reality, just like Zhuang Zhou Mengdi. ”
In 2019, Shiota asked a group of 10-year-old German children the same age as his daughter, asking a series of questions about the soul, and through the video work "About the Soul", people heard children's various answers: "The soul is transparent, but when I am angry it turns red, it turns blue when I am sad"; "When the pet dies, its soul seems to cry too"; "When I leave, my soul will visit others, so they begin to think of me"; "The soul is like a thin line, you can't cut it." If you lose your memory, the thread will dissolve on its own "...
In the installation Dialogue of DNA (2004), more than 400 old shoes carrying memories are scattered: high heels with broken heels, deformed sneakers, worn slippers and boots... Each shoe is tied by two red threads, as if tied with an emotional umbilical cord, and is pulled together to a certain point, looking at the red and brilliant, magnificent.
When I first returned to Japan, I felt familiar and unfamiliar, like finding an old pair of shoes that I hadn't worn for a long time, "My shoe size hasn't changed, but it doesn't seem to fit well." Something changed, and I started to think, what's the gap between them? What did I lose? So I started collecting old shoes. ”
The 4-mile red line strings together countless memories. While collecting old shoes, Shiota asked donors to write a small note telling the story behind them. Some of these shoes, which the donors wear for most of their daily commutes, some who have traveled the world with them, some from deceased families, some who belong to former lovers..." When I look at these shoes, they are just old things, but when I read those little notes, I see the breath of people and memory. ”
▲ Keys in Hand 2015 Old Keys, Wooden Boats, Red Lines Photo / Sunhi Mang Photo courtesy of VG Bild-Kunst and Chiharu Shiota, Bonn, Germany (Note: Non-works exhibited at the Long Museum)
In 2015, Shiota represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, and the giant installation "Keys in Hand" amazed the world. She collected thousands of keys from around the globe, strung them in countless red threads, and hung them above the viewer's head. Shiota believes that as the key to everyday objects, it not only carries memories, but also inspires people to explore another unknown world, which is the key to stringing together time and space. "When you have the key in your hand, you can open that door."
▲"Where are we going?" Photo/Mori Art Museum Photo/Kioku Keizo
In a second-hand suitcase bought at a flea market in Berlin, Yantian found an old newspaper from 1947, which made her feel the presence of her former owner. "People leave their hometowns with the destination in their hearts. Living among people of different nationalities, I suddenly forgot that I was Japanese. Looking at that face in the mirror, you realize for the first time that you have black hair and eyes. The farther you drift, the more you mix and mingle, the more you can reach a place that makes you re-examine yourself. ”
As a result, she created the huge installation Gathering - In Search of Home (2014/2021). Hundreds of horizontal suitcases were strung together by red threads, and some contained motors that swayed in the air and made noises from time to time. Yantian said the shaking boxes conveyed the excitement of people's departure, and the red line represented that no matter how far they went, travelers still cared about their families.
▲Gathering - Searching for Home 2014/2019 Luggage, Motor, Red Line Photo / Mori Art Museum Photo / Kioku Keizo
"When I look at a pile of suitcases, all I see is an equal number of lives. Why do these people leave where they were born and set out on the road to find their destination? Why are they on a journey? I tried to recall what the travelers felt in the early morning of departure. ”
In today's global epidemic and travel obstruction, Yantian's installation full of opportunities and stories is more thought-provoking, and old suitcases of different colors and sizes carry their memories, and they detour in the air to form a long river of travel...
The river of life, the web of memory, the "trembling soul" woven with red and black lines fill the entire space. "When weaving works, I often use threads to cover the ceiling first, then the walls, connecting the two, and when the threads are dense enough, I connect them to the ground. Finally, I would follow a separate line to find its beginning and tail, and if I couldn't find it, the piece would be finished. At that moment, I felt as if I could glimpse the sky and touch the truth. ”