Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries

September 12, 2025 – January 11, 2026

Japan Society Gallery presents the first New York solo museum exhibition of contemporary artist Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972). Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries centers on a newly commissioned, site-specific installation that explores wartime experiences and memories. Placing the original installation in dialogue with other works from Shiota’s oeuvre, the exhibition creates parallels between the humanitarian tragedy of war and the artist’s personal struggles, including confronting her mortality and her bicultural identity living between two home countries. By drawing connections between collective and personal experience and memory, the exhibition contemplates universal issues such as history, humanity, loss, time, space, the body, and national identity.

The exhibition also documents the conceptualization and creative process behind Shiota’s stage set designed for Japan Society’s theater commission KINKAKUJI (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), which will premiere on the opening night of the exhibition. Based on the novel by legendary Japanese author Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), the performance celebrates the centennial year of his birth. This new work brings Shiota’s innovative and deeply intimate stage design to American audiences for the first time.

About Chiharu Shiota:

Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972) is a contemporary artist best known for her site-specific, ephemeral installations in which fragments of memory are woven within webs of yarn that consume entire exhibition spaces. Shiota studied painting in Japan before training in performance art in Berlin, where she continues to live and work today. Her performances often present her physical body as a canvas, coating it in red paint or smearing it with earth. In contrast, her yarn installations allude to an absent body, with lines of thread representing intangible emotions, memories, and human connections all tangled together. Shiota has exhibited widely, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2025); Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka (2024), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); and National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC (2014). In 2015, Shiota represented Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale. Her works are in numerous collections, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, Germany; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Te Papa Tongerewa – The Museum of New Zealand, Wellington; Toronto Museum of Art; and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. Since 2003, Shiota has designed stage sets for performances at major theaters, including the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Geneva (2024), Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels (2011), and New National Theatre in Tokyo (2009).

Admission Information

Tuesdays–Fridays: 11 am–5 pm
Saturdays & Sundays: noon-6 pm
Free First Fridays, 5–7 pm*
Closed on major holidays

Tickets
$15 nonmembers
$10 students and seniors

Admission is always free for members, patrons with disabilities and an accompanying Personal Care Assistant.

*September 12th, 2025; October 3rd, 2025; November 7th, 2025; December 5th, 2025; January 2nd, 2026

Banner Image: Chiharu Shiota, Uncertain Journey, 2016. Photograph by Sunhi Mang. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2025 and Chiharu Shiota

Artist Headshot: Photograph by Sunhi Mang, 2024

Additional Image: Sketch for KINKAKUJI by Chiharu Shiota. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2025 and Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries is supported by The Coby Foundation, Ltd. and the Goethe-lnstitut with support from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Air travel between Berlin and New York is generously provided by Delta Air Lines.

Japan Society’s 120th anniversary initiatives and related programs are generously supported by Champion Sponsor, MUFG Bank, Ltd.; Advocate Sponsor, Mizuho Americas; and Friend Sponsor, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas).

Japan Society programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Exhibitions and Arts & Culture Lecture Programs are made possible, in part, by Sompo Holdings, Inc.; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund; the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; The Masako Mera and Koichi Mera, PhD Fund for Education and the Arts; Yasko Tashiro and Thierry Porté; Peggy and Dick Danziger; The Globus Family; Jun Makihara and Megumi Oka; Barbara Bertozzi Castelli; Members; Japan Society Gallery Council; and other Gallery supporters. Support for Arts & Culture Lecture Programs is provided, in part, by the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund.

Transportation assistance is provided by Japan Airlines, the official Japanese airline sponsor for Japan Society Gallery exhibitions.