Trace of Memory 2013

Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese artist born in Osaka in 1972 and who studied art at the Kyoto Seika University in Japan. She is the winner of several awards, including the 2002 Philip Morris K.K Art Award and a Distinguished Service Medal from Kyoto Seika University. Her powerful installations have been exhibited in Europe and in Japan, including, “Memory of Books,” in the 2011 Venice Biennale. Shiota’s work is held by major collections, including The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg. Shiota lives and works in Berlin.

Shiota is best known for creating 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 anxiety. Shiota explores the relationship between waking life and memories through hauntingly beautiful installations that incorporate everyday objects like shoes, pianos and hospital beds encased in webs of yarn. Stretched in multi-layers in a gallery space, Shiota weaves disorienting cocoons of black yarn that reflect the artist’s desire to ‘draw in the air’.