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| Metamorphosis of Consciousness, 2025, installation. |
Few contemporary artists explore memory, identity, and mortality with the poetic precision of Chiharu Shiota. The Japanese artist transforms space into labyrinths of thread, enveloping familiar objects—keys, suitcases, pianos—turning them into delicate vessels of shared memory. This autumn, Shiota’s work is on full display across continents, from a sweeping retrospective in Turin to two concurrent solo exhibitions in New York.
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| Uncertain Journey, 2016/2025, Installation view: Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, |
Opened since October 22, 2025, Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles at MAO Museo d'Arte Orientale marks the artist's Italian debut. Organised in collaboration with Tokyo's Mori Art Museum and curated by Mami Kataoka and Davide Quadrio, the travelling retrospective traces decades of her evolution through drawings, sculptures, photographs, and iconic installations including Uncertain Journey, In Silence, and Accumulation – Searching for the Destination.
Site-specific works conceived for MAO blur the line between object and environment, exploring migration, mortality, and the invisible ties that bind us to places and one another.
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| Accumulation – Searching for the Destination |
Meanwhile, in New York, Shiota’s presence is exceptionally layered. At Japan Society, Two Home Countries (running until January 11, 2026) marks her first solo museum exhibition in the city, a site-specific installation reflecting on wartime experiences, personal identity, and the passage of time.
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Installation view of Diary in "Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries" at the Japan Society, New York, 2025. Photo: by Go Sugimoto, courtesy of the Japan Society, New York. |
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| Photo: Giorgio Perottino |
Drawing on her bicultural life and commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the exhibition situates intimate memories within collective history. It also includes her innovative stage set for KINKAKUJI (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), bringing a Japanese theatrical landmark to U.S. audiences for the first time.Separately, Echoes Between at TEMPLON New York (through January 22, 2026) is Shiota's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Here, she crafts installations that meditate on consciousness and transformation. The Soul's Journey creates an organic, pulsating landscape of crimson, while thread-filled boxes and Infinite Lines paintings extend these explorations into more intimate forms. Around two chairs, thousands of luminous threads form a radiant cloud, evoking a continuous dialogue between the real and the imaginary.
Together, these exhibitions present a multilayered panorama of Shiota’s practice, spanning the monumental and historical, the introspective and poetic. Whether in Turin or New York, she suspends time and space, inviting audiences to wander through environments where memory, emotion, and identity intertwine like threads in an endless weave.
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Shiota Chiharu, Where Are We Going?, 2017/2025 Photo courtesy: MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale. |