Chiharu Shiota exhibition at the Grand Palais

at the Grand Palais from December 11, 2024 to March 19, 2025

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THE EXHIBITION:

The Grand Palais, before its full reopening in 2025, is presenting an exceptional event dedicated to the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. The exhibition “Chiharu Shiota. The Soul Trembles”, the first major monograph dedicated to the artist in France, will be held from December 11, 2024 to March 19, 2025. This unique event invites you to discover the poetic and emotional universe of this major figure in Art. contemporary.

Exposition Chiharu Shiota | Teaser
©2024 GrandPalaisRmn

MONUMENTAL FACILITIES FOR SENSORY IMMERSION

The “Chiharu Shiota” exhibition at the Grand Palais brings together more than 20 years of creation and extends over 1,200 m² of recently restored galleries. Co-organized with the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, this unique presentation brings together seven monumental installations, as well as sculptures, photographs, drawings, performance videos and archival documents. World renowned for her dense installations of intertwined threads, Chiharu Shiota, born in Osaka in 1972, transforms the space into a poetic maze where the visitor is invited to walk physically and emotionally.

Chiharu Shiota, Uncertain Journey2023 © Adagp, Paris, 2024

At the heart of this journey, we discover “Uncertain Journey”where empty black boats emerge from a cloud of red threads. This emblematic work illustrates the multiple paths of life, the fragility of existence and the idea of exile, while the red threads symbolize the vital link between human beings. Just as striking, “In Silence (En Silence)” surrounds a burnt piano and its furniture with black threads, suggesting the quest for memory, loss and melancholy. The observer finds himself faced with a kind of visual and tactile memory, where the absence of sound becomes a source of introspection .

Brighter, the installation “Where are we going? (Where are we going?)” suspends in the monumental staircase of the Grand Palais a flight of boats wrapped in white threads, giving an impression of lightness, renewal and spiritual questioning. White, a color introduced later in the artist’s work, here embodies purity, the blank page of life, marking a turning point after an episode of illness which had a profound impact on her.

Chiharu Shiota, Where Are We Going2017-2024. Installation view, *Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles*, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019. Photo courtesy Mori Art Museum, Tokyo © Adagp, Paris, 2024

Alongside these large installations, “Connecting Small Memories” unfolds through small miniature pieces of furniture found at flea markets. Connected by red threads, they form an intimate network, a weaving of memories and human stories. Other works, such as “Dialogue from DNA” where shoes offered by individuals come together into a whole charged with feelings, or “During Sleep”, a performance linked to hospital beds, testify to the importance of everyday objects in life. construction of a collective and personal memory.

These installations, ephemeral and immersive, invite us to feel rather than contemplate. As the artist explains, his threads weave in the air like three-dimensional drawings, replacing traditional painting which seemed too loaded with history and theory. This liberation of the pictorial medium, encouraged by his meeting with Marina Abramović, allowed him to develop a total art where the body, first present in his performances, gradually fades away in favor of symbolic objects. Chiharu Shiota’s works then become mental spaces, mirrors where everyone projects their own story.

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THE UNIVERSE OF CHIHARU SHIOTA: BETWEEN DREAM, MEMORY AND IDENTITY

Chiharu Shiota’s art draws on personal experiences that she broadens to universal issues: life, death, cultural roots, identity and memory form the invisible web that connects all of her creations. Faced with illness, the artist transformed her trials into sources of inspiration, integrating the fragility of the human condition into installations that invite us to reflect on each person’s place in the universe.

Chiharu Shiota

The colors she uses have deep meaning. Red symbolizes the link between beings, the circulation of blood, life itself. Black, often associated with mourning, the unknown or the depths of the cosmos, creates meditative ambiances and invites the observer to draw on their own memories. White, introduced later, appears as a new beginning, a call to hope and self-redefinition.

Certain videos presented in the exhibition further reinforce the existential dimension of Shiota’s work. In “About The Soul“, 10-year-old children answer the question: “Where does the soul go after death?” Their words full of innocence and poetry open spiritual horizons, reminding us that Shiota’s art, if it is feeds on its own experiences, touches on questions shared by all cultures.

This transversality is also found in “Walls” (2010), video performance where the artist intertwines herself with pipes running through a red liquid, evoking blood circulating outside the body. She confronts visible and invisible borders, whether physical, political or mental, and invites us to question our own inner limits.

Thus, the “Chiharu Shiota” exhibition at the Grand Palais is not reduced to a succession of spectacular works. It is an initiatory journey which questions the spectator, confronts him with the precariousness of his certainties and encourages him to ask himself how the links are woven between the intimate and the universal, between yesterday and tomorrow.

WHY GO SEE CHIHARU SHIOTA AT THE GRAND PALAIS?

Visiting “Chiharu Shiota” at the Grand Palais is immersing yourself in a world of threads, symbols and emotions. This first monograph in France offers a unique opportunity to discover one of the major figures of contemporary art, whose international reputation is built on his ability to marry aesthetic delicacy with existential depth.

Chiharu Shiota, Accumulation – Searching for the Destination2014-2024. Vue de l’installation, *Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles*, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019. Photo © Kioku Keizo. Courtesy Mori Art Museum

By reserving your ticket now for the Chiharu Shiota exhibition at the Grand Palais, you are treating yourself to much more than just a visit: an introspective experience, a journey through mental and dreamscapes. Everyone finds their own interpretation, their own echoes. The installations, whether monumental or more intimate, are aimed at both art lovers and the curious, and the emotion that emerges will stay with you well beyond your exit from the museum.

This exhibition is an invitation to reconnect with the sensitive, to redefine our links with the world, memory and others. In a context where human connections are questioned more than ever, the art of Chiharu Shiota offers a suspended moment, a space of reflection where the woven threads become so many bridges towards new perceptions. Come feel, vibrate, reflect – let the artist’s threads guide you into this singular universe and leave with the quiverings of your own soul.

GET THERE:

Address : 3 avenue du Général Eisenhower, 75008 Paris

SCHEDULES :

Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Late night on Friday until 10 p.m.
Exceptional closure: Wednesday December 25, Tuesday January 28, Tuesday February 11 and Wednesday February 12, Tuesday March 11
Early closures: December 24 and 31 (6 p.m.), February 5 (6:30 p.m.)