Chiharu Shiota's existential threads tell the story of the ties between us and the world
The Japanese artist enchants the MAO in Turin with the exhibition 'The Soul Trembles' until 28 June
Key points
The Soul Trembles. The title of the solo exhibition by Chiharu Shiota, born in Osaka in 1972, fully describes the telluric shock to the soul that one feels upon entering the Museo d'Arte Orientale in Turin. Shiota's exhibition appears as an all-embracing living organism, in which the common threads are not only present in the installations, but live through our emotions.
Fighting, stubborn and innovative, the Japanese artist recounts through her art the pain of cancer, the wait for motherhood, the silent agony of recurrence, predestined love and the search for meaning in things. Through her lucid personal experience, we see reflected the harmony of the universal that touches each of us.
In Silence
Among the works in the exhibition In Silence (2008), in which a piano immersed in a network of black wires evokes the silence that follows destruction: 'When I was nine years old, a fire broke out in the house next door to ours. There was a piano, burnt to black as coal [...] There are things that sink into the recesses of the mind and others that find neither physical nor mental form. Yet they exist, like souls without a tangible form'.
The Red Thread
Shiota winks at the school of Marina Abramović, but does so with a personal and clearly distinguishable touch, a faithful pupil who learns without aping her teacher. The famous woollen threads have become the artist's trademark, a beautiful reference to the well-known legend born in China and popular in Japan of the red thread, the story of how certain predestined souls are linked to each other by an invisible but present bond. "Threads intertwine, tangle, break, knot, stretch. Sometimes, the threads that manipulate the heart can even become an expression of relationships between people." The work can only be said to be complete when the artist's gaze can no longer follow the individual threads, but the whole becomes a truly larger and more sublime space. "At that moment I feel I can glimpse what lies beyond and touch the truth."
