Weaving Webs Of Existence

Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota works wonders with wool, transforming her thoughts, feelings, and inner battles into moving and haunting installations of immense beauty that speak of the human experience. Writer Y-JEAN MUN-DELSALLE finds out what makes her tick, her thoughts on life, death and art, and why fear is necessary for her to make art.

It might not be considered a noble material, but Chiharu Shiota has made yarn her signature medium in the creation of powerful, delicate, and enveloping environments in which recovered objects like suitcases, shoes, dresses, bed frames, windows, and doors are sometimes suspended in a web.

Inhabiting immense spaces with networks of string or wool interwoven in all directions, from floor to ceiling, that represents the complexity of human relationships, she builds monumental, site-specific artistic installations of architectural richness.

Intended to be places of solace and contemplation, they invite visitors to wander inside and get lost. Aware of the transformational quality of art, Chiharu incorporates highly personal physical and emotional experiences that she expands into something universal that speaks to the collective.

“My work is about fundamental human questions about relationships, life, and death,” she says. “I try to express thoughts I am unable to talk about through my art, and I think many others have the same emotions. I have also become obsessed with human memories and existence, and have recreated a human presence without a physical body.”

Nonetheless, she’s aware that art is for the individual, so although some might feel connected and recognise the feeling that the work expresses, others won’t.

True to self

There’s honesty in her creations as Chiharu shares the intimate and fundamental moments in her life, heavy with meaning and truth, and encourages audiences to reflect. Investing her mind and body entirely in her interventions, her innermost thoughts and feelings turn into works of art offering a penetrating glimpse into her soul.