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The Arts Intel Report

Chiharu Shiota: Signs of Life

Chiharu Shiota, State of Being (Photo Album), 2022.

Jan 19 – Mar 4, 2023
293 10th Ave, New York, NY 10001, United States

In 2015, in the Japan Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, the installation artist Chiharu Shiota stunned viewers. Her work was called The Key In the Hand, and it was executed with 180,000 metal keys that rained down from a spreading red sky of woven yarn. For Shiota, the keys were memories and the red yarn suggested blood, the heart, a synaptic map. Now Shiota unveils a new installation, based on the idea of the “web”—a living organism made up of connective structures. She has draped the gallery space with white threads that hang from the ceiling. Two cast-bronze arms (her own) are placed at the center of the space. “I always though that if death took my body, I wouldn’t exist anymore,” Shiota says, “I’m now convinced that my spirit will continue to exist because there is more to me than a body.” The installation is accompanied by a series of sculptures. —Elena Clavarino

Photo © Courtesy Templon, Paris, Brussels, New York