Completely renovated, the Grand Palais has reopened its doors. This winter, the Parisian institution welcomes a Japanese artist, Chiharu Shiota, internationally recognized for her monumental wire installations. See you from December 11, 2024 to March 19, 2025 for the largest exhibition ever given to the visual artist in France, co-organized with the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, an exhibition called “The Soul Trembles”, for the thrills of the soul.
Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1972, Chiharu Shiota studied in Kyoto then in Canberra, Australia, before migrating to Hamburg, Germany to study Fine Arts. She finally left her bags in Berlin, where she became a student of Marina Abramovíc for a time. She first explores performance and involves her own body, naked and covered in earth, in her work. Try and Go Home (1997) before gradually moving towards woolen threads to make it his favorite material and his undisputed signature.
Through intertwined installations, Chiharu Shiota takes over space to explore major subjects of the human condition: the body, dreams, relationships, forgetting… “These threads reflect feelings. So they can mix or knot, loosen or cut. Like sentimental ties”, explains the artist in an interview given to the Guimet museum. The color of these threads, of course, is always a thoughtful choice, and the artist mainly uses red or black.
In In Silence (2008), it is a burnt piano and empty chairs which are deprived of their potential because they are buried in an immense black spider's web. In 2002, its installation During Sleep shows women sleeping on hospital beds, as if caught in an immense cocoon of threads which could seem comfortable if it did not appear threatening. In Counting Memories (2019), Chiharu Shiota materializes knowledge with gigantic networks of black wool in which numbers are embedded, which escape from schoolchildren's desks.
At the Grand Palais, his sprawling works extend over more than 1,200 square meters, offering an immersive experience on the edge of the fantastic to the public, who can evolve within these vast canvases stretched from floor to ceiling. In order to present her work since the 1990s, the Parisian institution unveils a broad panorama of the Japanese artist: photographs, drawings, performance videos, archives of her productions… So many pieces which, end to end, allow us to immerse yourself in the poetic, sprawling and massive work of Chiharu Shiota.
“Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles” can be seen from December 11, 2024 to March 19, 2025 at the Grand Palais (Paris).
Konbini, partner of the Grand Palais.
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