Chiharu Shiota: Living Inside
Galerie Templon presented ‘Living Inside’, a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. Featuring a group of new works, both intimate and delicate, the exhibition explored the notion of home and the fragmentation of our daily reality.
Galerie Templon presented Living Inside, a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. Living Inside was conceived as a reflection upon the domestic space and home life, prompted by the lockdowns experienced during the pandemic. Featuring a group of new works, both intimate and delicate, the exhibition explored the notion of home and the fragmentation of our daily reality.
Known for her spectacular installations created from woven thread, which have been shown all over the world, this exhibition saw Shiota playing on the notion of scale, recollection, and our secret bond with everyday objects. Using items such as dollhouses and miniature furniture and window frames, the exhibition presented glimpses into miniature worlds, wrapped in a web of red threads. The pieces were seemingly frozen in time, reassuring in their familiarity, yet unsettling in their stillness. Alongside the intricate installation was a series of new drawings created in the solitude of the deserted studio, staging relationships between enigmatic figures. Trapped in accumulations of waves or spirals, spectral characters seemed to also be interlinked by red or black threads, a metaphor for the ties between spirits.
The pieces were created during the past year, as the advent of the pandemic saw Shiota forced to halt her travels and remain in one place for the first time in fifteen years. In isolation in Taiwan and Berlin, she experienced this momentary stop as an echo of many of her familiar themes: immobility, silence, seclusion, and the uncertainty of destiny. The works were conceived as an invitation to meditate upon the strange circumstances of the past year. As she explained: “We are connected, since we are all in the same situation. Everyone is sitting at home looking at their furniture and asking questions about the outside world, which right now has been reduced to a mere memory.” Shiota took a bittersweet approach as she examined the codes of a living space that has been drastically curtailed but is already, maybe, brimming over with possibilities for inventing the new. Living Inside showed us the different facets of this experience; distance, restriction and stillness, and a longing for connection.
Living Inside was on show at Galerie Templon from May 27 to July 17.
Shiota’s current shows include Connected to Life, a solo show at Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Germany, until 5 September, and Direction of Consciousness, a solo show at Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France, until 1 November.
Images courtesy of Galerie Templon.
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