Chiharu Shiota explores interconnectedness through blood

The Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota has achieved great acclaim for her large-scale art installation work that masterfully utilises everyday objects to breathe life into abstract concepts and human preoccupations such as life and death. Shiota explores these concepts through elements of the human body such as blood, which is a theme that continues in her latest offering, Who am I Tomorrow?, exhibited at the former assembly hall in Kunstraum Dornbirn in Austria until November 12, 2023.

The art installation is composed of over 5,000 red threads that hold a mesh of tubes up above audience members, causing them to appear as though red blood is flowing through them. Some of these tubes break away from the larger mesh and connect to Erlenmeyer flasks, commonly found in laboratories. The “blood” gets removed from the tubes it flows through, only to be re-introduced into the stream. In its entirety, the configuration feels as though it constitutes parts of a great organism that hangs above viewers visiting the assembly hall. Shiota’s cardiovascular system, sans flesh, is meant to represent the interconnectedness of all things; that of the body within and the body without, and of us and our physical and social environments.

Discussing her creative journey with STIR, the artist says, "I wanted to be a painter, but I felt limited in the two-dimensional space, so as a student, I had the idea to work in the third dimension. It’s different from drawing with black pencil on a canvas or paper or from creating a black line in the exhibition space. The accumulated thread becomes more like a cosmos. When I start working in a space I feel like I can touch the universe. Once I began this practice, I wanted to continue to work with these large-scale installations.”

For some time, Shiota would only make installations with black string, which she understood to be not dissimilar from a pencil line. But in 2015, when she was invited to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale, she began collecting thousands of keys. She explains that “the key is shaped like a person with its big head and small body and, in the object, there is a lot of memory. I wanted to connect these keys with red thread because it is the colour of blood. We are all connected by blood. I have continued to work with thread and many different materials, like beds, shoes, chairs, glasses, liquid, fire and more.”

Returning to Who Am I Tomorrow?, the structure of the former assembly hall played a major role in the installation’s form. Shiota tells STIR that she liked the space as it diverges from the traditional white cube format and possesses a feeling of history; of stories and memories from the people that occupied it. In her words, “The architecture seems like a body. Within the installation, the outside of the body is connected to the inside.”

A particularly notable aspect of this work to consider is that the occurrence of the blood within Shiota’s piece is meant to represent information about our origin, nationality, health and so on, and while the artist has utilised these facets of human identity to explore interconnectedness, they have also been used historically, perhaps to a devastatingly greater degree, to atomise and persecute human beings. The artist acknowledges this dualism, telling STIR, “To live in this society means to be connected. Everything is inside of our blood: nationality, religion, family. This connects us but sometimes it is also like a border.”

She also brings our attention to what may be considered a more tenebrous aspect of the work: the title of the installation is meant to reference an uncertainty regarding the future. In Shiota’s words, “If you suddenly have an accident and your heart is transplanted into another person, I wonder how much would remain of yourself or if you lose your memory, how can you tell if you are still yourself. Without memory, I could not know who I am.”

Beyond Who am I Tomorrow?, the artist’s next project is her touring exhibition The Soul Trembles, making its way to Shenzhen Museum in China (November 7, 2023 - January 14, 2024). "This touring exhibition started at the Mori Art Museum in 2019 and was the biggest show of my career. It presents 25 years of my artistic work, with many installations and shows, marking my path from kindergarten until now," says Shiota. Since then, the show has been to many countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Indonesia and now China again. Shiota has put great effort into it and the art exhibition will be sure to captivate audiences, both old and new.