Existing comment:
Perspectives
Chiharu Shiota
"When someone disappears, we come to recognize their existence for the first time. Presence dwells within absence."
-- Chiharu Shiota
The body and its relationship to the physical world are fundamental concerns in the work of Chiharu Shiota. Often weaving mundane objects related to the body into large-scale installations. Shiota conveys a profound sensibility for the accumulation of memories -- and inescapable sense of loss -- that permeate daily life.
Frequently moving residences in Berlin during the late 1990s, Shiota began weaving yard around her belongings, and then turned to other people's objects. For Over the Continents, she collected hundreds of shoes from friends, strangers, and flea markets and, when possible, requested short notes from donors about the shoes' importance. Written in Japanese, the notes sometimes describe deceased loved ones or memories of cherished moments. By placing each shoe individually and pointed outward with its handwritten note. Shiota invites the viewer to reconsider this intimate, familiar, and yet often overlooked object.
As a mass of empty, well-worn shoes arranged in a radiating composition, Over the Continents resonates with both the absence of unknown bodies and the opportunity to image different lives. While the shoes vary in appearance and in the stories that they may conjure, all are tethered with bright red yard to a single point, alluding to the essential connection between human beings and the shared need for a point of origin.
Translations of a selection of the notes are available on the adjacent computer kiosk and online at asia.si.edu/shiota . Share stories and photos of your own shoes with hashtag #perspectives . |