Chiharu Shiota. The Soul Trembles

MAO Museo d'Arte Orientale, Turin presents Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, curated by Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum, who conceived the original idea for the exhibition, and Davide Quadrio, director of MAO, with curatorial assistance from Anna Musini and Francesca Filisetti. This major monographic exhibition of the Japanese artist's work will be held at MAO in Italian debut – and for the first time anywhere at an Asian art museum – after have been hosted at a series of prestigious international institutions, including the Grand Palais, Paris, the Busan Museum of Art, the Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai, the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane and the Shenzhen Art Museum. It is a wide-ranging, complex, expressively powerful exhibition that traces back over all of Shiota's production, through drawings, photographs, sculptures and some of her most famous environmental and monumental installations.

Often inspired by personal experiences, Chiharu Shiota's works explore the intangible – memories, emotions, dream-like images and visions, offering silent spaces for contemplation – and raise questions about universal and existential concepts like identity, the relationship with the Other and life and death. Crossing temporal and spatial boundaries, her works deal with the most intimate, vulnerable part of the human being.

Her most famous installations, composed of red or black yarn entwined to create monumental structures, envelop the spaces where they are installed, transforming them and leading the visitor through an immersive experience in which fascination alternates with anxiety, movement with stasis.

The works on view include some of Shiota's most iconic installations: Where Are We Going? (2017– 2019), in which the motif of the boat, recurrent in other works, evokes visions of uncertain futures and lives; Uncertain Journey (2016), composed of ship skeletons arranged in a space wrapped in bright red yarn, to suggest the many encounters that can take place at the end of each journey; In Silence (2008), in which a burnt piano and a number of seats for a phantom audience, covered with a web of black yarn, express the silence that follows destruction; Reflection of Space and Time (2018), which uses a dress and its mirror image to reflect on the presence in absence; Inside – Outside (2009), a work about the concept of separation between interior and exterior, private and public, East and West; finally, the monumental Accumulation - Searching for the Destination (2021), composed of hundreds of oscillating suitcases, symbolising memory, movement, migration and the archetype of the journey undertaken by each one of us. In keeping with the tradition of MAO exhibitions, Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles was conceived as a living organism and will be accompanied by a rich public program of music, performance, screenings, talks and more.

There will also be a series of educational activities and workshops for schools, families and visitors of all ages, from young children to adults. The richly illustrated bilingual catalogue, published in Italian and English by Silvana Editoriale and edited by Kataoka Mami and Davide Quadrio, will include contributions by international scholars and critics offering in–depth analysis of the artist's work.

Biographies Chiharu Shiota - Born in Osaka in 1972. Lives in Berlin. In 2008 she was awarded the Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology. Her works have been shown in museums and institutions across the globe, including Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka (2024), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023), Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGoMA), Brisbane (2022), ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (2021); Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Art Gallery of South Australia (2018); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom (2018); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2017); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2015); Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2014); Museum of Art, Kochi (2013); National Museum of Art, Osaka (2008). She has also participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Aichi Triennale (2022); the Oku-Noto International Art Festival (2017); the Sydney Biennale (2016); the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale (2009) and the Yokohama Triennale (2001). In 2015, Shiota was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale.... read the rest of the article»