In 2018 the internationally renowned artist Chiharu Shiota is exhibited at the Gothenburg Museum of Art

Chiharu Shiota
The Distance

Gothenburg Museum of Art
21 April — 30 September 2018

Hundreds of boats in black metal and white thread with hopes and dreams as their cargo. Installations resembling spider-webs of wool yarn that involve the viewer both in body and mind. On April 21, a solo exhibition featuring the internationally renowned artist Chiharu Shiota opens at the Gothenburg Museum of Art.

The works of Chiharu Shiota (b 1972) incorporate performance, sculpture and drawing. She is well known for her complex and poetical webs of wool yarn, in which she intertwines and crosses threads from floor to ceiling. Shiota was born in Osaka, Japan, but has lived and worked in Berlin since 1996. She had her major breakthrough on the international art scene at the Venice Biennale 2015. In the exhibition The Distance, Shiota’s artistry is presented in a comprehensive museum exhibition for the first time in Sweden.

Shiota often imbues her works with her own experience of migration, of how time and distance, memory and absence shape our identity in an increasingly globalized and changing world. After a period of physically demanding performances, where she tested the boundaries of her body, Shiota began working with thread in a kind of three-dimensional drawing. Over time, her thread drawings grew into monumental spatial installations that often include clothes, furniture and letters – everyday objects that become symbolic containers of dreams and stories.

-Chiharu Shiota’s installations are charged with symbols. In them, our impressions are formed just as much by our bodily experience, our purely physical sensations and feelings, as by our own emotional history in the form of memories and dreams. It is with great anticipation that we give her the opportunity to transform the rooms of the exhibition, says Anna Hyltze, Curator and Acting Museum Director.

The exhibition comprises photography, drawing and sculpture along with two large-scale installations, created specifically by Chiharu Shiota for the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Each installation requires time consuming manual labour as Shiota slowly weaves a billowing path that the visitor can follow. By moving through the installation, the visitor activates the work and becomes involved in the creation of the work's meaning. Shiota’s installations are both monumental and fragile, at times impenetrable.

The exhibition at the Gothenburg Museum of Art coincides with a presentation of Chiharu Shiota at the Wanås sculpture park in Skåne. Altogether, the two exhibitions offer a unique insight into the work of a highly relevant artist.

Contact
Helene Karlsson, Communications
+46(0)31-368 35 07, helene.karlsson@kultur.goteborg.se

Anna Hyltze, Curator and Acting Museum Director,
+46(0)31-368 35 20, anna.hyltze@kultur.goteborg.se