Tied up: Chiharu Shiota's 'Uncertain Journey' entangles Blain|Southern gallery, Berlin
Artist Chiharu Shiota has transformed Blain|Southern’s Berlin gallery, using 750,000 metres of thread from 5,000 balls of blood-red yarn. The 10m high installation, titled Uncertain Journey, fills the entire space and can be viewed from the inside, or looking down from a mezzanine above. 'As people come in at first they look around and then they see an infinite line. Just as the universe is infinite, there appears to be no end to this line of yarn,' Shiota explains. It is her first exhibition in her adopted hometown in eight years, and coincides with Berlin Art Week.
Known for her immersive, site-specific installations, Shiota’s Uncertain Journey also incorporates metal sculptures, made to look like the skeletons of the hulls of boats, as if caught in a giant net. Boats are a recurrent motif in the artist's work, also appearing in her installation at the Venice Biennale last year, where she represented Japan.
'Boats are always travelling, always carrying people, so in a sense we are always in a boat – ready to go but we don't know exactly where to go. This is the concept that I wanted to express with the boat,' Shiota says. 'Our life is a trip without a destination, we don't know where we're going, and it's easy to say the end is death, but that's too easy for me. I wanted to emphasise this feeling of travelling with nowhere to go,' she adds.
The metaphor resonates unavoidably with images of the current migration crisis in Europe. At the same time, the huge cocoon-like structure is comforting and feels protective. The thousands of threads resemble a network of nodes – 'like a memory system inside our brain,' as Shiota sees it – that speaks of the infinite connectivity between humans, all part of the same ecosystem.
INFORMATION
Chiharu Shiota is on view from 17 September – 12 November. For more information, visit the Blain|Southern website
ADDRESS
Potsdamer Straße 77-87, 10785 Berlin, Germany
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
Discothèque perfumes evoke the scent of Tokyo in the year 2000
As Discothèque gets ready to launch its first perfume collection, Mary Cleary catches up with the brand’s founders
By Mary Cleary Published
-
This unassuming London house is a radical rethinking of the suburban home
Station Lodge by architect Andrei Saltykov in South West London offers a radical subversion to regional residential architecture
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Explore 100 years of Svenskt Tenn and the interiors Estrid Ericson has crafted
‘A Philosophy of Home’ explores 100 years of Svenskt Tenn and the daring vision for interiors its founder Estrid Ericson developed
By Diana Budds Published
-
Remote Antarctica research base now houses a striking new art installation
In Antarctica, Kyiv-based architecture studio Balbek Bureau has unveiled ‘Home. Memories’, a poignant art installation at the remote, penguin-inhabited Vernadsky Research Base
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Ryoji Ikeda and Grönlund-Nisunen saturate Berlin gallery in sound, vision and visceral sensation
At Esther Schipper gallery Berlin, artists Ryoji Ikeda and Grönlund-Nisunen draw on the elemental forces of sound and light in a meditative and disorienting joint exhibition
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Cecilia Vicuña’s ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ wins Best Art Installation in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards
Brain Forest Quipu, Cecilia Vicuña's Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, has been crowned 'Best Art Installation' in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Michael Heizer’s Nevada ‘City’: the land art masterpiece that took 50 years to conceive
Michael Heizer’s City in the Nevada Desert (1972-2022) has been awarded ‘Best eighth wonder’ in the 2023 Wallpaper* design awards. We explore how this staggering example of land art came to be
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Cerith Wyn Evans: ‘I love nothing more than neon in direct sunlight. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful’
Cerith Wyn Evans reflects on his largest show in the UK to date, at Mostyn, Wales – a multisensory, neon-charged fantasia of mind, body and language
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
The best 7 Christmas installations in London for art lovers
As London decks its halls for the festive season, explore our pick of the best Christmas installations for the art-, design- and fashion-minded
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Topology in Miami is powered by heartbeats
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer brings heart and human connection to Miami Art Week 2022 with Pulse Topology, an interactive light installation at Superblue Miami in collaboration with BMW i
By Fiona Mahon Last updated
-
Textile artists: the pioneers of a new material world
These contemporary textile artists are weaving together the rich tapestry of fibre art in new ways
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Last updated