CULTURAL CENTER OF CAPE COD
CHIHARU SHIOTA
“Through art we can reflect on ourselves more. A picture, a drawing and art in general can often express more than words can. It is a sense of expression that will help other people understand themselves and others better.”
Chiharu Shiota is a Berlin-based Japanese artist, renowned internationally for her large-scale, immersive yarn installations – thousands of feet of interconnected threads, unified into room-sized three-dimensional ‘canvasses.’ The complex webs of knotted and interdependent networks often symbolize the connections between people and the complexity of human relationships. “Connection is part of our existence,” she says. “We cannot exist without feeling connected to someone or something.”
Shiota was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1972 and studied art at Kyoto Seika University in the mid-1990s. Although she enjoyed a great love of painting as a child, it lost its allure when it became a subject for study. While at university, she moved away from the two-dimensional canvas by which she felt trapped and restricted and was instead drawn to the three-dimensional universe of performance and installation art.
“I couldn’t paint anymore, because for me painting was just color on the canvas. It had no other meaning whatsoever. I found myself stuck, without being able to go back or forward. But I couldn’t quit art.”
Her first major installation work was inspired by a dream in which she was trapped inside a painting. She called the work Becoming Painting, pouring red enamel paint on her body to recreate the feeling of being part of an artwork. The work, and particularly her direct physical involvement, gave her the freedom to conceptualize art outside of the restrictions of the canvas, and Shiot’s use of thread and yarn to fill entire rooms—her trademark for over two decades—developed from this freedom.
“Threads allow me to explore space, piling up layer after layer creates a surface like the night sky which gradually expands into the universe.”
Her creative process—usually beginning as soon as she walks into the installation space—is often based on personal experience and memory, so the results are often autobiographical. After making preliminary sketches she begins to fill the space with threads, building them up into dense networks. These are then punctuated with everyday objects—keys, dresses, shoes and suitcases— set within the threads to provide narrative touchstones for the viewer. She uses other, less mundane objects such as boats and window frames, or pianos to create more dramatic, poetic experiences.
For Shiota, the addition of the objects is key. They are significant for the memory they keep held within them—their past use and history—adding to the artwork’s story and intensifying the viewer’s experience.
Shiota is a storyteller, sharing meaningful moments of her life. She turns her most intimate thoughts, experiences, and fears into art, investing her body and soul into her inventions. “My art is very personal,” she says. “All my art begins with an experience or emotion, and then I expand this feeling into something universal.
She has lived and worked in Berlin since 1997 and currently is showing her work in Japan, Italy, Germany, China, and Finland.
HAPPENINGS
Saturday, January 22, from 7:30-9:30pm
Dance Party!
With Summer Town
This versatile band performs folk, folk rock, Americana, country, and rock and roll. Great vocals and music combine to make Summer Town a must-see act!
This show will feature a special “Tribute to American Music” from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Bring your friends and make some new ones.
Adults only.
BYO refreshments.
Table seating.
We hope you’ll join us!
$20