Chiharu Shiota

This is from personal experience. When Mami Kataoka, curator and now director of the Mori Art Museum, visited me in Berlin in 2017, she told me she wanted to do a retrospective of my life, more than twenty-five years as an artist. I was very happy. But the next day, during a routine check-up at the hospital, I was diagnosed with cancer again. I had cancer twelve years earlier, and now it had returned. So, while preparing for the exhibition, I had to undergo chemotherapy and surgery. My daughter was only nine years old at the time, and I worried about her, how she would survive if her mother died, how she could understand death, and where she might think I would go. I thought a lot about life and death, and that is why I chose the exhibition title: because death is universal. Everyone is going to die; life is limited. This is everyone’s experience, not just mine. No one can escape death.

It can feel like the “other” because I am using other people’s memories. It is another person’s suitcase, or windows, or small doll furniture. I am using other people’s items and materials because they contain so much memory. Many years ago, when I was walking through a flea market in Berlin, I saw these old suitcases and felt that I needed to buy them. I had never met the people who owned them, but when I opened the suitcases at home, I found an old newspaper from 1946 and a packing list. Seeing that packing list made me feel as if I could sense this person’s life. This is the whole theme of my artwork.

I don’t know, people react to my work in very different ways. Some may feel negative emotions or even start crying, while others might feel happy, or find the dark room beautiful, or feel scared. Everyone is different. It’s not only about fear, and it’s not only negative feelings, each person experiences something different. That is why contemporary art is so interesting; there is no single answer and no single emotion that everyone feels.

I actually didn’t decide the pathway through the exhibition that was part of the curatorial work by Mami Kataoka and Davide Quadrio, the director of MAO. I create the artworks, but the curators decide how the audience moves through them. I decide how viewers walk inside the installations, but not how they move between the works.

I cut the thread at the end of the exhibition, and some I can use to re-knot the thread for future installations, but most of the material is destroyed. It’s not going to be entangled; creating the artwork is most important. I don’t have any feelings about the deconstruction. I am quite happy that it is gone; it just remains in memory. I usually like to think about how I could do it differently or better next time.

It’s a retrospective of my life as an artist, which also includes this collection of my theatre sets until now. This is part of my history.

The installation has to be in silence. The piano is burned, and there is no sound. I am creating the music with the black string.

This exhibition began in 2019. The curatorial process started with Mami Kataoka, and we have worked closely ever since. Davide Quadrio, the director of this institution, also contributed his own ideas; he knows this building well and curated the new work for the show. Anna and Francesca were also very helpful, and we all worked together very well.

I think the feeling of wanting to become an artist came from within myself. In Osaka, at that time, there wasn’t much. There was no contemporary art scene when I was little. The most exciting event was the Japan World Exposition in Osaka in 1970, but it focused more on technology than on art. So, I believe the desire to become an artist came from inside me.

In 2015, I created the boat installation The Key in the Hand at the Venice Biennale using red thread. The following year, I wanted to continue working with the boat motif, but not with an original boat. I wanted to create a universal boat with black wire, almost like a pencil drawing. Then in 2017, I made the white boat for Le Bon Marché in Paris. It’s made from glued thread, which creates a very different visual effect. These works were created in different years and in different places, and inspired by different emotions, but in The Soul Trembles, they come together in the same space, allowing both journeys to be included.

This is the first time this retrospective exhibition has been shown in Italy. It’s also the first time to be shown in an Oriental art museum and presenting my work alongside the museum’s own collection. This was very interesting because it isn’t a white-cube space; there are many stories of Buddha and many historical objects located next to my installations. It was more challenging for us, but I think it worked very well.

It’s like looking at a photo album, like when you were a child looking through your family album, looking at your identity. Looking at past artworks feels similar. I can remember what I created in 1999 or 1997, but the feelings from that time are gone. It almost feels like the work was made by a different person, just as a fourteen-year-old and a fifty-year-old are different. And I want to continue to create.