Chiharu Shiota: A question of perspective

Chiharu Shiota, Japan/Germany b.1972 / Installation view of A question of perspective 2022 in ‘The Soul Trembles’, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane / Polypropylene ropes, 80mg paper, found furniture, cable ties, staples / 500 x 810 x 1215cm / Commissioned 2022 with funds from Tim Fairfax AC through the QAGOMA Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Chiharu Shiota / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA / View full image

Thu 4 Aug 2022

Chiharu Shiota’s enveloping, ethereal creations give form to intangible concepts such as memory, dreams, anxiety and silence. ‘The Soul Trembles’ at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in 2022, was the Japanese-born, Berlin-based artist’s largest and most comprehensive exhibition to date.

The exhibition title ‘The Soul Trembles’ refers to the inexpressible stirrings of the heart, while the countless threads of Shiota’s striking, room-filling installations allude to the complex connections that reach deep into our being, touching on what it is to be human.

The exhibition's new commission for QAGOMA is the major installation A question of perspective 2022 which draws on the artist’s memories of Uluru, experienced on her first visit to Australia.

Watch | Chiharu Shiota discusses A question of perspective 2022

A question of perspective — a dense arrangement of thick black polypropylene ropes and sheets of paper, suspended over an empty table and chair — touches on themes of absence and vulnerability within Shiota’s practice, and being confronted by the enormity and complexity of existence.

The work harks back to the year she spent as an art student in Australia in the 1990s, when she took the opportunity to travel the country widely. Shiota recalls visiting Uluru in central Australia and observing the vast desert planes around it, which brought to mind the planet’s circumference, the movement of the stars, and the scientific questions that once ‘deprived Galileo of his sleep’.

In A question of perspective, what she describes as a ‘black universe of ropes’ is intended to evoke a similar sense of mystery and wonder, while the chair at its centre implies absence and emptiness.

A question of perspective 2022

Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles
18 June – 3 October 2022
Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA)
The Fairfax Gallery (1.1), Gallery 1.2 and the Eric & Marion Taylor Gallery (1.3)
Brisbane, Australia

Organised by the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and curated by Mami Kataoka, Director, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.