ART CITIES:Brussels-Chiharu Shiota
Chiharu Shiota is best known for creating room-filling, monumental, delicate and poetic environments. Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood, and dealing with anxieties. Chiharu Shiota in her installations often employs the use of everyday objects, within her work to explore the relationship between living and dying and to access memories found within these objects.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Templon Archive
Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1972, Chiharu Shiota has been living and working in Berlin since 1999. After a degree in painting at Seika University in Kyoto, Chiharu Shiota turned to performance and pursued her artistic studies in Berlin. Chiharu Shiota unveiled a new installation, “Black Rain”, at Galerie Templon in Brussels. This immersive work with its spectacular setting of black umbrellas was created as a reaction to drastic experiences in the artist’s life. A forest of suspended umbrellas, “Black Rain” shrouds visitors under a dark mantle, both menacing and reassuring, disturbing and dreamlike. As a counterpoint, Chiharu Shiota is presenting a new collection of sculptures and paintings in unexpected materials: gilt bronze, blood-red glass, red and white thread. The artist explains: “A storm appears on the horizon, the clouds grow darker and darker. This is not a light drizzle, cleaning the air giving life to earth, this is a natural catastrophe, threatening my existence. The black sky absorbs all light, all life. Underneath the umbrella, the sound of the rain grows louder and louder. It is deafening. The rain has turned black, my emotions have become dull, my existence is uncertain. With my installation “Black Rain” I want to express this dark time in my life, the storm that I have endured. In 2017, the doctor informed me that the cancer had returned, it had been twelve years since I had recovered from this disease. In this time, I had been working constantly, creating new installations and traveling to exhibitions, I was occupied with life and had forgotten that life is limited. After the cancer had returned, I realised that life and death are much more closely connected. I cannot escape death, but I have realised that my strength in life is reached by the confrontation of death. To be alive means to endure suffering, it is part of our existence. This is our story. I transformed my suffering to create something new, which made me feel hopeful”.
Info : Galerie Templon, 13 rue Veydtstraat, Brussels, Duration: 24/4-1/6/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.templon.com
