ART CITIES:Brussels-Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese Performance and Installation artist 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 Daniel Templon Archive

Chiharu Shiota explores questions such as “What does it mean to be alive?” and “What is existence?” in large- scale installations that make use of a variety of media including sculptural elements, photography, and video. Two years after inaugurating Galerie Templon’s Brussels space, and in the wake of her universally acclaimed participation in the 56th Venice Bienniale, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is returning to Belgium with a brand new performance and installation. In her installation and performance “Sleeping is like death” at the Galerie Daniel Templon in Brussels, hospital-style beds are imprisoned in what looks like a vast spider’s web. This performance is the latest expression of Chiharu Shiota’s obsession with the slumbering state: abandonment of the body, estrangement between beings, the presence of a body whose spirit is wandering elsewhere, dreams and reminiscences. The artist is demanding a dual engagement from the viewer, both physical and emotional. The monumental site-specific installation envelops the space in the graphic interplay of its woven surfaces. Their angular and circular intersections seem to be drawing in the air. The artist, celebrated for her labyrinthine networks made up of clouds of threads, is here exploring geometric experiments and deconstruction. Also in the Gallery the artist exhibits a series of deconstructed and abstract sculptures.

Info: Galerie Daniel Templon, Rue Veydt 13A, Brussels, Duration: 14/1-20/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.danieltemplon.com