Ala Champ
 
00:00/

WHERE TO EAT IN PARIS

Seven Best Places & Spaces To Wine & Dine

Architecture Deeply Interconnected With Nature

SANAA's Ryue Nishizawa Weaves Architectural Flow At This Retreat in Karuizawa

Fine Dining at an Altitude of 2000m

Sustainably Championing Ingredients from the Alpine Region

BÀBÁ, FATHER

Photographer Olufemi Adegboye Presents His Intimate Photo Series of Black Fathers

The Delicate Art of Mixology

An Exclusive Hiroshi Sugimoto-Designed Six-Seater Bar Led By Mixologist Tsuyoshi Kimura

Maebashi’s Creative Revitalisation

Akihisa Hirata Structures A Space for Art, Living & New Encounters

A Cinematic Setting for this Modern Sushi Restaurant

A Stand-Out Japanese Dining Destination in Brisbane

THE BEST RESTAURANTS IN LONDON RIGHT NOW

Our Pick Of London's Top 5 Culinary Destinations

Harnessing the Power of Seaweed

On the Coast of Margate, A Risk-taking Skincare Brand Harvesting the Wild Material

Culinary Craftsmanship

The Avant Garde Blue Mountain School's New Michelin-Starred Restaurant

SERPENTINE PAVILION 2023

Architect Lina Ghotmeh Creates A Brilliant New Space For Gathering & Togetherness

Sky High

An Eastern Touch with Western Comforts at this 5 Star Hotel in Tokyo, 52 Floors Up

Kyoto’s Leading Art & Design Hotel

A Stellar Amalgamation of East Meets West

STUDIO GANG’S ORGANIC VERNACULAR

An Architectural Marvel: The Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation

Craftsmanship and Omotenashi at Its Finest

Unequivocally Tokyo's Most Extraordinary Luxury Urban Ryokan Experience

Samuel Ross

The British Artist-Designer's First Solo Exhibition at White Cube

CHIHARU SHIOTA

The Soul Trembles At Tokyo's Mori Art Museum

June, 2019
Shiota Chiharu, Uncertain Journey (2016) Metal frame, red wool | Installation view Blain | Southern, Berlin | Photo: Christian Glaeser

Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum presents the largest and most comprehensive exhibition to date of 47-year-old Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. Titled The Soul Trembles, the exhibition presents a closer look at Shiota’s performance and installation work, exploring the presence of absence that has been a pivotal, ongoing thread in her oeuvre.

Her thought-provoking works examine human fragility, identity, and “pondering the soul and the meaning of life.” It’s no wonder she is one of Japan’s most regarded contemporary artists; from solo exhibitions in the Art Gallery of Australia (2018) to Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2018) and most notably represented Japan in 2015 at the 56th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition.

Shiota examines the humility of life; and champions human empowerment. Her own vulnerability, memories and personal reflections are found within The Soul Trembles presenting works from over 25 years; from her large immersive installations that include intricately-woven thread span across entire spaces that evoke movement and travel such as in Uncertain Journey (2016) to In Silence (2008) suggesting quietude. These works have also been reproduced as spatial art in various stage and theatre performances at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels, Belgium) to the Polish National Opera (Warsaw, Poland).

Looking back in even her early work from the 1990’s, there is a ongoing unique in the colours and materials found. From pure white, or red and dark tones in mixed media using wool, timber, rope, crayon, to even soil and acorns – each is diverse yet cohesive. Although her training began in oil painting, she soon explored herself as a medium, such as in Becoming Painting (1994) where she used her own body as a canvas.

A newly-commissioned work Out Of My Body (2019), presents life-size bronze-cast body parts scattered amongst a woven, red thread, symbolising her own feeling through battling cancer again for the second time in 12 years; having parts of her body removed and undergoing chemotherapy, she felt her soul was being left behind. Yet through her personal tribulations and artistic expression, she retains an impressive optimism; “It struck me that perhaps the painful treatment along with the confrontation with death is a tribulation to create honest works. The exhibition presents my work from over 25 years. It is a dialogue with my unveiled, naked soul.”  You can’t help but feel moved. The Soul Trembles is on view at the Mori Art Museum, until October 27, 2019.

Shiota Chiharu, The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019) Photo: Joanna Kawecki / RICOH GR2
Artist Shiota Chiharu at her Berlin studio, Atelier Chiharu Shiota | Photo: Sunhi Mang
Shiota Chiharu, In Silence (2008) Burnt piano, burnt chair, black wool (Alcantara black thread) | Installation Art Centre Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland 2008 | Photo: Sunhi Mang
Shiota Chiharu, The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019) Photo: Joanna Kawecki / RICOH GR2
Shiota Chiharu, The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019) Photo: Joanna Kawecki / RICOH GR2
Shiota Chiharu, The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019) Photo: Joanna Kawecki
Shiota Chiharu, Accumulation - Searching for the Destination (2016) Suitcase, motor, red rope | Installation view Art Unlimited, Art Basel 2016 | Courtesy Galerie Templon | Photo: Atelier Chiharu Shiota
Shiota Chiharu, The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019) Photo: Joanna Kawecki

Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles 

Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Until 27 October, 2019

#Champ_Tokyo

June, 2019