Chiharu Shiota knew she wanted to be an artist by the time she was 12. She was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1972, and her parents, who manufactured fish boxes for a living, worried about their daughter’s creative pursuits. Still, they supported her. A performance and installation artist, Shiota created her first work in 1994, Becoming Painting, in which she layered red enamel paint on her body. She moved on to the use of red yarn, draped and tangled to suggest blood, the heart, a synaptic map. For her first major solo show in Italy, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and dreamlike installations invoke moments in Shiota’s artistic journey. —Elena Clavarino