Chiharu Shiota’s Woven Worlds at Museum MACAN

The immersive, woven worlds of Berlin-based Chiharu Shiota consume Jakarta‘s Museum MACAN. Surprisingly, it is the artist’s first institutional solo showing in Indonesia.

The exhibition presents enveloping sculptural works in which she unpacks the intangible into the physical. Included in the exhibition is Uncertain Journey (2016–22), a work that comes together as a sweeping mass of tangled red yarn suspended in mid-air. On the floor, metal frames make up the shape of small boats, carrying the red clouds on a journey of uncertainty.

In conversation with Ocula Magazine in 2016, the artist remarked on her use of yarn. ‘It is soft and I use it like a mirror of my feelings. So when I have a bad feeling, it’s tangled. Yarn has tension like a human relationship. A relationship might be tight but it can be tangled and is connected by feeling’. More recently Shiota has explored the interconnectedness of personal narratives, weaving written or typed stories from participants with red ropes suspended from the ceiling at Manifesta 14 Prishtina.

Shiota’s immersive installation, The Eye of the Storm (2022), is also currently showing at the Bangkok Art Biennale, and a new work will feature in the new lobby of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, when it opens in March 2023. The artist’s solo exhibition, Signs of Life, will also open at Templon New York on 19 January 2023.

Main image: Chiharu Shiota, Uncertain Journey (2016–22). Metal frame, red wool. Variable dimensions. Ⓒ Chiharu Shiota. Exhibition View: Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, Museum MACAN, Jakarta (26 November 2022–30 April 2023). Courtesy Museum MACAN, Jakarta.