CHIHARU SHIOTA - Labyrinth of Memory

Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese performance and installation artist haunted by the traces that the human body leaves behind. She is best known for collecting discarded objects and notes to create room-filling, monumental yet delicate, poetic environments. Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood, and dealing with anxieties. Shiota finds diverse visual expressions for these subject matters, the most celebrated being impenetrable installations made of black thread which often enclose various household and everyday, personal objects: a burnt-out piano, a wedding dress, a lady’s mackintosh, sometimes even the sleeping artist herself.
Shiota studied at Kyoto Seika University, Canberra School of Art, and Berlin University of the Arts with Marina Abramovic and Rebecca Horn. Her work has been presented at the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, 2013), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (United Kingdom, 2012), National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2007), Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, 2006), and MoMA PS1 (New York City, 2003), as well as the Biennials in Venice, Fukuoka, and Yokohama. Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1972, Shiota currently lives and works in Berlin.