Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles

Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles is the largest solo exhibition of the internationally renowned, Japanese-born, Berlin-based artist’s work to date, with GOMA being the exclusive Australian venue, now showing until October 3, 2022.

The Soul Trembles highlights twenty-five years of Chiharu Shiota’s artistic practice across large-scale installation, sculpture, video performance, photography and drawing.

Featuring transformative, large-scale installations constructed from millions of fine threads that cluster in space or form complex webs that spill from wall to floor to ceiling, Shiota’s beautiful and disquieting works express the intangible: memories, dreams, anxiety and silence.

Since the 1990s, Chiharu Shiota has developed an extensive performance and installation practice. Best known for her expansive, encompassing, room-scale installations of black, white or red threads, she attracted widespread public attention with her work from the Japanese pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Born in Osaka in 1972, Shiota enrolled at Kyoto Seika University to study painting in 1992, but soon abandoned the medium in favour of performance. From 1993 to ’94 she undertook an exchange program at Canberra School of Art, just as installation art was finding its way into Australian museums and galleries, before relocating to Germany in 1996 to pursue further study. She has been based in Berlin since 1999.

Curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, The Soul Trembles is Shiota's most comprehensive solo exhibition to date and centres on seductive constructions, contextualising them with works on paper, sculpture and documentation of the artist’s performance and theatre practice.

Image 1: Chiharu Shiota / Japan b. 1972 / Installation view of Accumulation – Searching for the Destination 2014/2019, in ‘The Soul Trembles’, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019 / Suitcase, motor and red rope / Dimensions variable / Courtesy: Galerie Templon, Paris/Brussels / Photograph: Kioku Keizo / Image courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Image 2: Chiharu Shiota / Japan b.1972 / Installation view of Uncertain Journey 2016/2019, in ‘The Soul Trembles’, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019 / Metal frame, red wool / Dimensions variable / Courtesy: Blain | Southern, London/Berlin/New York / Photograph: Sunhi Mang / Image courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Image 3: Chiharu Shiota / Japan b. 1972 / Installation view of In Silence 2002/2019, in ‘The Soul Trembles’, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019 / Burnt piano, burnt chair, Alcantara black thread / Dimensions variable / Production support: Alcantara S.p.A. / Courtesy: Kenji Taki Gallery, Nagoya/Tokyo / Photograph: Sunhi Mang / Image courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

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