Author: Yingbao
If you often brush short videos, or have friends in Shanghai on WeChat, you must have seen photos of "full houses of fireworks" earlier.
In the photo, several boats woven of steel wire are scattered around various corners; the boats are surrounded by tens of thousands of meters of red knitting thread, which from a distance looks like a raging flame.
Titled Journey of the Unknown, the installation was created by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota and is currently on display at the "Chiharu Shiota Solo Exhibition" in Shanghai.
The exhibition attracts many locals to punch the clock, because Yantian's works have always been in the circle with "visual impact" and "immersive atmosphere" - you don't need to do your homework in advance to read the emotions conveyed by the works, including fear, uneasiness, nostalgia and hope.
Therefore, it takes courage to watch her exhibition, and if you are not careful, you will fall into it.
Knitting thread is a tool that Shiota relies on to "jump out of traditional two-dimensional works and three-dimensional emotions". The knitting threads of different colors represent different states of mind.
Red means "not willing".
In 1999, in his work "Dialogue with DNA", Shiota used 450 red knitted threads to hang 450 shoes from different owners and carrying different stories; the other end of the knitting thread was uniformly extended to a corner.
It was as if a hole had appeared in the sky above our spiritual world. Countless thin lines shot out of the hole, struggling to pull back the memory that was about to disappear.
Similar to their expressions, there are also "Gathering - Finding the Destination" and "The Key in hand".
The former was created in 2014, and Shiota suspended 440 suitcases with red knitted thread to commemorate the city he walked through.
The latter, first exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, consists of more than 50,000 keys covered with rust or scratches, and 50,000 red knitted threads that hang them. With this work, Shiota also became the focus of the exhibition.
Black stands for "restlessness".
When he was 9 years old, a fire broke out in Shiota's home, and a piano was blackened and emitted a burning smell. The elder moved the piano to her doorstep—right against the window of her bedroom.
Every time The salt pan approached the window, it was difficult to avoid seeing its dark silhouette and remembering the fear of being surrounded by fire, "it was deeply imprinted in my mind, and the more I tried to forget it, the more concrete its shape became."
When she grew up, she wrapped a piano layer by layer with black knitted thread, trying to recreate the picture of the "burning piano" in that year, and named it "In Silence".
As time passed, more and more things made Shiota anxious, and she wrapped the audience around the piano with black knitting thread, as if to express that "uneasiness is spreading."
In 2017, Yantian was diagnosed by doctors with a recurrence of cancer. But at that time, she was no longer afraid, but thinking about how to live well in the remaining days.
In her works, a large number of white knitted threads began to appear - white represents "hope, beauty and eternity".
In the same year, "Where We Will Go" was exhibited in a shopping mall in France. Using nearly 270,000 meters of white knitting thread, Yantian hoisted 150 small boats in mid-air, almost covering the floor and windows of the mall. The viewer can move freely inside, receiving the soft white knit thread , the caress of "hope".
"Beyond Time" is more like an end to the uneasiness of its own past. The subject of the work, also a piano, is this time wrapped in white knitted thread. Knitted threads connect to the ceiling, and there are a large number of paper sheet music scores inside the threads. From a distance, it looks as if new movements are erupting and starting a new journey.
In Yantian's Solo Exhibition in Shanghai, there are more than 80 pieces of installation artworks that coexist with tension and amazement, and it is difficult to express the shock they can bring you.
If you have the chance, take a trip and immerse yourself.