Chiharu Shiota, the Artist Making Human Connection Tangible

"Known most for her large-scale artworks created from vast, intricate networks of thread, she developed her unique practice to make tangible the endless speculative configurations of human connections - something to be experienced rather than defined. But by asking her to describe her new exhibition, Threads of Life at the Hayward Gallery, I'm dragging her back into a reductive world of language. "If I wanted to express myself in words, if I could explain in words, I'd rather write," she says. "So I want to build visually, and I want to create visually. What I want to describe is beyond words.""

"Exploring memory, co-existence, the body and consciousness, her monumental installations draw on the Red String Theory (or ), a common concept in Japan which suggests our most meaningful encounters are inevitable because we're connected by threads that may tangle but never break. Shiota's work envisions these mystical threads as something more omnipresent but nonetheless magical, engulfing everyone and everything. "If you live in a society, you have to be connected with someone - it's unavoidable," she says. "There's always a connection. I just wanted to show the connection; I wanted to make it visible.""

"I was studying art and painting, but whatever I painted, I felt like I was copying somebody; they all looked like somebody else's work. I hit a block. At this time, I had a dream in which I went inside a painting - actually inside it, I remember the smell of oil - and I was thinking, 'How can I make this painting better? How can my movement make this painting better?'" Waking, she began adorning her body with red paint, which would lead her to search for materials to move beyond the flat surface of the canvas."

Chiharu Shiota constructs immersive, large-scale installations using vast networks of thread to materialize human connections, memory, the body, and consciousness. Her practice draws on the Red String Theory, imagining inevitable bonds among people as omnipresent, tangling yet unbreakable threads that engulf everyone and everything. Born and raised in Japan and based in Berlin since 1996, she shifted from painting after dreams of entering a canvas and sensing oil and movement. A turning point involved adorning her body with red paint and sourcing materials to move beyond flat surfaces toward performative and spatial work. The work aims to make invisible connections visible through tactile, experiential installations such as Threads of Life.

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