joseph scissorhands

Chiharu Shiota- Threads of Life, 2026

'By using thread, I can draw in three dimensions. I pull the threads as if I’m drawing lines, and with that feeling I stretch the drawing through space,’ she says. ‘At first, it was simply a line for drawing, but as I continued working with it, the acts of connecting, cutting, and tangling began to feel very close to human relationships, how they are severed, and how they become entangled.’ - Chiharu Shiota.

Regular readers will no doubt be aware of my enthusiasm for Shiota's work. Having featured it on this blog here, here, and most recently last year for her triumphant retrospective in Paris here. This is Shiota's biggest UK show to date and first at a major arts venue. Best known for her large-scale immersive installations which feature dense webs of red or black threads engulfing gallery spaces and certain objects through which the viewer has to negotiate a path. The installations are both haunting and affecting, concerned as they are with themes of life, death and our various relationships to one another. This exhibition at the Hayward is shared with another artist - Yin Xiuzhen who occupies the lower gallery spaces, with Shiota's installations on the upper levels. At the top of the stairs visitors are met with a video performance piece featuring Shiota's body lying engulfed by red and white threads resembling surgical tubes feeding into the body perhaps transfusing blood or other bodily liquids vital to sustaining life. Wall is a piece which refers to the artist's battles with cancer. Moving on past the video installation into the exhibition proper we are met with a stunningly dense red thread installation from which are suspended countless keys of all shapes and sizes. In the middle of the room sitting like a portal are a set of old doors again partially engulfed by the threads and keys. This is the installation that I was hoping to see, and the effect of the dense webs of thread forming a shroud on the walls and ceiling together with the keys is truly jaw dropping. Shiota states of her process of building these installations on site, ‘When you create the work on-site, your intuition becomes part of the piece, even while hesitating and figuring things out, you make instant decisions as you go. I love the process of working through those moments. The keys caught up in the threads are a metaphor for how individual experiences can connect to become collective memories. Shiota has always been drawn to old things, and these found objects such as keys are part of her ongoing interest in presence and absence. The objects in her work were once important in someone’s life, these personal belongings hold memories and stories, and the threads become the glue that links them together, representing the invisible threads of time and shared experience. The next smaller space is occupied by one of Shiota's dresses encased in mesh of threads again reminiscent of a bewitched fairy-tale character caught up in a tangled web as a result of a spell cast by some malevolent witch. The effect is enchanting. The next installation is perhaps the weakest of the three in the exhibition. Letters of Thanks is forest of hanging read threads between which are suspended letters sent in by visitors and admirers of her work after an open call. The thread holds the letters safely and the environment of hanging threads exudes an air of safety or cocooning as visitors weave their way through hanging threads. Having negotiated their way through the path of hanging threads and letters the visitor next encounters a wall of some of Shiota's original drawings some of which include stitched threads, and some black and white photographs of her naked body in a forest setting in a performance entitled Try and Go Home. The last room contains another thread installation entitled During Sleep, an emotive and sinister piece, full of dense webs of black thread creeping over a series of white metal beds. This work was a response to the artist being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, being in remission for a period, only for the cancer to return again. "They found a malignant tumor. At that point, it wasn’t a question of what to do next. I was faced with the reality that I could die.My daughter was nine years old at the time, and as I was working, I just kept thinking: ‘If I die, how will she live? I used every bit of strength I had. I was barely managing just to live." The whole tableau of the During Sleep installation was strongly reminiscent of an asylum or some other institutionalised medical setting. It is very creepy and unnerving, but made for wonderful affecting art. It was particularly interesting to see how this work unsettled visitors and observe that they didn't tend to linger for very long in this space such was the effect of the work on them. I really admired this piece though, and thought it just as strong and complementary to the opening piece Threads of Life. Sadly I wasn't able to book for the weekend performances where women actually lie in the beds entangled in the threads which I can only imagine adds greatly to the sense of eeriness and menace evoked by this installation.

Wall, 2010