Chiharu Shiota: The Unsettled Soul

by Jason Waite, Ivana Goossen, Chiharu Shiota, Christelle Havranek

Overview

Widely acclaimed for her distinctive visual language, which combines drawing, performance, sculpture, and installation art, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972 in Osaka, lives and works in Berlin) addresses fundamental human concerns. Creating large-scale thread installations that incorporate a variety of everyday objects and memorabilia, she forms powerful environments that evoke a sense of nostalgia, personal history, and collective memory. The catalog accompanies the exhibition The Unsettled Soul, the first presentation of the artist in the Czech Republic. In addition to extensive photographic documentation of the exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha, the publication features an essay by Jason Waite discussing Shiota’s early works as well as an interview with the artist conducted by the editor, Christelle Havranek, about her key themes and the creation of the Prague exhibition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783969122204
Publisher:	DCV
Publication date:	04/15/2025
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 10.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jason Waite is a curator, writer and cultural practitioner with a focus on forms of practice that generate agency. Most recently he has been working in sites of crisis at the exit of the remnants of capitalism, searching for tools and radical ideas for new ways of living and working together. Born in Bulgaria, Ivana Goossen acquired a degree in International Economic Relations from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia and later an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business (U.S.A.). Since 2010 she held the position Director, Executive MBA Worldwide Program and Center for Executive Education for Europe at the University of Pittsburgh. She is now the CEO of Kunsthalle Praha. Shiota is born in Osaka, Japan. Shiota’s inspiration often emerges from a personal experience or emotion which she expands into universal human concerns such as life, death and relationships. She has redefined the concept of memory and consciousness by collecting ordinary objects such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses, and engulfing them in immense thread structures. She explores this sensation of a "presence in the absence" with her installations, but also presents intangible emotions in her sculptures, drawings, performance videos, photographs and canvases. Havranek is chief curator at Kunsthalle Praha. She holds a French postgraduate diploma (DEA) in art history, criticism and conservation from the University of Rennes 2. From 1999 to 2016, she was curator and head of programmes for the gallery and cinema at the French Institute in Prague. Since 2016, she has been responsible for developing the dramaturgy of Kunsthalle Praha, where her recent curatorial activities have included site-specific installations and new commissions such as the Faç ade Project series (2017-2021), the Living Kunsthalle performance night (2019).