La maison rouge presents the first major exhibition in Paris of Chiharu Shiota, a Berlin-based Japanese artist, for which she will produce two large-format installations. These are After the Dream, a work composed of suspended threads, and From Where We Come and What We Are, composed of suitcases. The exhibition will also show a selection of drawings.

Since the mid-1990s, Chiharu Shiota has become known for her installations of tangled threads. By suspending strands of black wool from the walls, floors and ceilings of gallery spaces, she creates impressive graphic networks through which visitors must find their way and their place. These giant webs often envelop everyday objects such as chairs, beds, pianos or items of clothing, as though the artist were attempting to keep a trace of objects that might otherwise vanish from her memory by imprisoning them in her web.
These threads are like pencil strokes in the air. Thus accumulated, they obstruct the spectator’s view while adding a sculptural dimension to the work. Simple white dresses, suspended and ensnared in this impenetrable cocoon, suggest absent bodies. As the spectator advances further into the installation, they feel they are penetrating the physical manifestation of a mental image.
Chiharu Shiota’s second installation at la maison rouge introduces a new material to her work: hundreds of battered suitcases have been assembled into a shelter, an archetype for a house. This work, entitled From Where We Come and What We Are, gives form to a central theme in her work: what physical and mental memories do we have of our past? Do memories help construct us or do they prevent us from moving on?