Behind-the-Scenes Curating Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries
Even before Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries opened to the public in mid-September, the exhibition received major press from Elle Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Elle wrote: “Chiharu Shiota explores the liminal space within identity, where who we choose to be meets the parts of ourselves we cannot change or deny. Her solo show, Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries, at the Japan Society feels like an elegy for the widely varied Japanese-American experience as much as a monument to her unique traumas and triumphs.” The New York Times piece focused on the Fall Performing Arts Season, Emergences, celebrating the centennial of Yukio Mishima’s birth, tying in the article to Shiota’s set design for KINKAKUJI (The Golden Pavillion), and noting that the exhibition “commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, drawing parallels between her personal struggles and the experience of war.” The following interview with Dr. Michele Bambling, Senior Director, Japan Society Gallery, and Dr. Naomi Kuromiya, Senior Research Associate, goes behind the scenes of the exhibition to explore the relationship between curator and artist.
Why did you select Chiharu Shiota as the solo artist for this exhibition?
Michele:
At the time I joined Japan Society, the Leadership Team was discussing how to structure our various programs around key dates—the first of which was the 80th commemoration of the end of World War II. I immediately thought of Chiharu Shiota. I had first seen Shiota’s work in an exhibition called Departure at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai. I was struck by the way Shiota dealt with the theme of transience, because in the UAE, nearly 90% of the people living there (including myself) are from somewhere else. To see Shiota’s exhibition in that context deeply resonated with me, especially since we were both working with personal and collective memories. At the time I was curating exhibitions that presented oral histories and material culture shared by Emirati citizens and longtime international residents. Shiota’s work struck me as troubling yet serene in the distinctive way that she investigates highly charged issues such as immigration and identity in our constantly shifting world. For investigating the theme of 80 years following the end of World War II, I thought Shiota’s connective red cords would be appropriate. Importantly this would be Shiota’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City.
Naomi:
Many of the people who experienced the end of World War II are no longer alive or will not be with us for very much longer, and many younger people don’t necessarily feel that they have a direct connection with what happened. The war has slowly become history—something that can feel abstract and distant. In Chiharu Shiota’s work, abstract concepts such as the war merge with personal memories, thereby immersing the visitor in a particular emotion and generating a direct connection to the concept that might not otherwise exist. For that reason in particular, I think that Shiota is a perfect fit for the theme of the exhibition.
Michele:
Chiharu Shiota expresses honest, universal emotions in all her exhibitions, throughout the globe. Her artistic language is comprehensible across borders—one reason why Shiota is a leading contempory artist. Her work conjures a sense of our shared humanity while recognizing our individual challenges. Through invoking anonymous diaries and lost photographs Shiota relates wartime and postwar experiences to people, like herself, who did not experience that era. In Shiota, you have an artist who ties intangible collective histories to tangible materials in a profound and relatable manner.
In a video made for a recent exhibition in Boston, Shiota stated: “Home is my art, home is where I can make my art.” Shiota’s art is mainly site-specific and it doesn’t always survive the duration of the installation. How did she—and you—work with the Gallery space for this exhibition? How does this fit into her commission for the set design of KINKAKUJI?
Michele:
The collaboration between Shiota, Artistic Director Yoko Shioya and me began with exploring commission concepts: the exhibition recognition of 80 years after the end of World War II and the theater centennial celebration of Yukio Mishima’s birth. Our collaboration next took on a spatial dimension when we walked through the Japan Society building together. In a modest voice, Shiota ambitiously asked us, “May I take on all the spaces of the gallery and stage?” With that, over the course of a year the dual commission with Shiota evolved in tandem remotely and during the installation period. One section of the exhibition demonstrates this collaborative approach by presenting Shiota’s concept and rehearsal sketches for the KINKAKUJI stage set. During the installation period Shiota moved back-and-forth between the gallery and stage intensively sketching, weaving, and directing. She installed “two home” structures within the Japan House gallery, her temporary artist studio—a place she calls home.
Can you talk about the material that Shiota uses to create her art? How does that translate for the viewer in terms of concept and symbolism, especially around Two Home Countries?
Naomi:
Chiharu Shiota began her career as a painter, but at a young age, she started to feel confined by working in two dimensions. Then, around the time she began to experiment with installation art, she also started creating performance art. As she transitioned from two-dimensional to three-dimensional installations and performances, which are inherently ephemeral and site-specific, the use of yarn was perhaps not the most obvious next step. But Shiota has talked about yarn as a way to paint in space, in three dimensions. Each strand of yarn that you see in the gallery is functioning like a painted line. The yarn also functions as a tangible trace that makes visible the movement of the artist’s body through time and space. The yarn is literally a record of that movement. Besides the visual function of the material, it also has a deep symbolism. Shiota sees red yarn as standing in for things like veins, blood vessels, or neurons in the brain. Blood and neurons are what store intangible things like human relationships, trauma, and memory. The yarn is representing all of that. It not only paints and traces movement through space, but it also symbolizes complex connections between people, tangled human memories, and what lingers after a traumatic event.
Michele:
On first glance, Chiharu Shiota’s yarn works are awe inspiring! The sheer visual allure is one reason why her work is so appealing. On closer look, her work can take on a deeply disturbing quality. Webs of yarn consume the space in a way that can be overwhelming yet a pathway opens up, inviting people to walk through the work. Visitors not only look at the work but experience it from within, physically and viscerally. The immersive environment encourages visitors to engage with the content by looking in multiple directions, while drawing their own connections. I find Shiota’s use of material fascinating because it is so minimal. She achieves all this simply with yarn—just one material, one color and one thickness of cord. The yarn itself is metaphoric. A drawing begins with a single line. With two lines or more, form and gradation develop. Shiota builds work through an accumulation of single strands into which she weaves symbolic objects. The works are not didactic—by connecting materiality and ephemerality, Shiota lets us make associations and find meaning for ourselves.