UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS GET UNCOMFORTABLE ANSWERS
“Chiharu Shiota’s installations transform the spaces they inhabit in ways that are concrete yet deeply felt. Routinely immersing and engulfing various (used) objects, her woollen thread environments are emotional, sensual, ethereal, and lyrical. Woven within them is a haunting sensibility. As if using these threads to paint and draw in space, Shiota builds a picture of the complex ties that not only bind us to one another and to the world, but also to the memories that are always shaping the cycle of life.”
I have been waiting to see this exhibition for a few months now, ever since I first saw the poster advertising it. Everything about it resonated: the entanglement of threads, the vast space covered by them, the colour red. When I finally got to see it it was more than I expected.
I was very touched by the description of Wall, Shiota’s Video performance from 201o: “I had wanted to create a work around the theme of walls for a long time. I took photographs of the Berlin Wall and the Western Wall in Jerusalem, but I decided to focus instead on the ‘walls’ within our bloodstream: family, nationality, religion, and other boundaries to do with the human condition. These walls give us comfort and a sense of identity, yet they can also strangle us. I feel as though that is so powerful, knowing that something that gives us comfort can also be strangling us, it truly resonates, like having healthy children, a supporting husband and a happy home means one feels like trapped in a golden cage. Like having no parents where we live is really hard, but visiting them in Poland and having them around all the time for short bursts of time, can feel overwhelming and suffocating.
This room took about 2 weeks to complete by te Artist and 10 people
When I entered this next room, with the thought that it was about Letters of Thanks (2026)
“First shown in 2013 in Kochi, Japan – where my parents are from – Letters of Thanks became a reflection of my relationship with them. I wanted to convey my gratitude to my father, who had worked so hard for his family, and I was prompted by an urge to have people write the words we often find too difficult to say in person. It is I, more than anyone else, who wants to say thank you.
Each time the work is exhibited, I invite people to share their own thank-you letters.
Letters from Brazil, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Japan, and now London form a constellation that connects past and present.
All lives are filled with happiness, suffering, disappointment, and gratitude, and as human beings, we can relate to each other through the simple act of saying ‘thank you?” It is mostly my grandmother who did so much for me and to whom I feel I did not say ‘thank you’ enough
This room took 5 days to complete
This piece really resonated as I constantly feel I am in Poland with one leg and in London withg the other, always thinking Poland is my true home but unable to feel like that when I’m there
But then came the an interesting realisation, after a conversation with one of the people working during the exhibition, available to answer questions. I asked the uncomfortable ones and got some uncomfortable answers. I asked her how does Artist sell her work or make her money and she seemed almost disgusted about my question, responding quickly that, you know “Artist don’t think like that, all of the art in this exhibition is owned by the artist and she’s not thinking about selling it.” Also that’s not the main important thing to her so then I asked her OK well interesting but she has to make money somehow and I heard: “she does that through many other things like Artist residencies and projects of that sort” and then she said a lot of artists don’t even want to sell their work. They’re not interested in that and that was just not something I agree with to be honest. At least I don’t think that’s what makes someone a real artist, not wanting to sell their work. I get that it’s very important to the artist, revealing the person I get it but why if you do something that’s personal you’re showing it to all these people to look at and to feel similar things or different things from experiencing what you’re feeling, but then you don’t want to sell them. Why?!? Does that make them less personal, less important? It’s very confusing, it just seems to be that in the art world. To me it’s obvious that everybody wants to make money doing what they like doing, which is creating, but they are so ashamed to talk about it. They have to pretend they don’t care about selling their work.
And that entire conversation happened in this one dark, depressing room, which took 2 weeks to be filled with threads by the Artist and a team of 10 people. They do a performance in here where they sleep in the beds
Similarly, I don’t believe in THE WHOLE “to be an artist find another job and do it on the side” bullshit because if on top of having children, I have another job to make money, so all that takes 3/4 of my life, I absolutely will have no energy to do the art or space in my brain to do the art so to be personally, that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.