Credit

Installation view of Chiharu Shiota’s Uncertain Journey (2016/2019, metal frame, red wool, variable dimensions), in the exhibition Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019. Photo Sunhi Mang, courtesy Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Credit

September 26, 2026 – February 14, 2027

Chiharu Shiota

Name: Chiharu Shiota
Start: 2026-09-26
End: 2027-02-14
Location: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Soul Trembles

1.Introduction2.Learn more3.Credits and curatorial team

Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles is the largest solo exhibition to date of Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. Since its premiere at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in 2019, it has travelled to eight other venues around the world and will be coming to Montreal in the fall of 2026—mark your calendars!

Covering 25 years of Shiota’s career, this groundbreaking exhibition pays tribute to the oeuvre of this internationally acclaimed artist, who is known for her performances and large-scale, immersive installations made with red, black or white thread. Employing a visual language that has universal resonance, her art transcends time and borders, rousing audiences in a collective joining of the spirit.

Shiota’s installations are site-specific, shaped in response to the spaces they inhabit. Like drawing in space, the artist weaves and intertwines her webs by hand, in situ, in a performative, repetitive, and meditative process of creation. Being reborn with each iteration, these works represent the impermanent nature of existence, a premise that guides Shiota’s sensibilities.

The Montreal presentation will include three monumental thread installations—Where Are We Going? (2017-2019), Uncertain Journey (2016-2019) and In Silence (2002-2019)—among other installations. It will also feature sculptures, performance videos, photographs, drawings and documentation relating to Shiota’s performances and her stage designs for dance, theatre and opera.

Credit

Installation view of Chiharu Shiota’s Reflection of Space and Time (2018, white dress, mirror, metal frame, Alcantara black thread, 280 x 300 x 400 cm. Commissioned by Alcantara S.p.A), in the exhibition Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019. Photo Sunhi Mang, courtesy Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Delve further

The exhibition’s subtitle conveys Shiota’s aspiration that her art trigger profound emotional responses—feelings powerful enough to stir the soul. Her work is often inspired by her personal experiences, including having to face her own mortality following two cancer diagnoses. Shiota probes existential questions, seeking meaning in the journey of life, in the existence of the soul, and in what remains after death.

Despite originating from her own narrative, the artist’s exploration of universally human themes and experiences—memory, connection, anxiety, resilience, dreams, existence, and silence, among others—invite all manner of interpretations, such that each visitor can engage with them in their own way.

Shiota’s signature monumental thread installations are immersive and map possible journeys through space and time. They offer potential passageways, both physical and spiritual, intimating the different directions a life can take according to the choices we make.

Chiharu Shiota was born in 1972 in Osaka Prefecture, and grew up in Kishiwada City. From 1992 to 1996, she studied oil painting in the Art Department of Kyoto Seika University, while also working as an assistant to Muraoka Saburō (1928-2013) in the Sculpture Department. During this time, she studied abroad at the Australian National University School of Art in Canberra, where she turned her focus to performance and installation art.

At the age of 19, Shiota saw a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017), which inspired her to go to Germany to study under Abakanowicz. After a long and involved process, Shiota finally travelled to Europe in 1996 and enrolled at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg. She subsequently studied with performance art pioneer Marina Abramovic (born in 1946) at the Braunschweig University of Art from 1997 to 1998, then with Rebecca Horn (born in 1944) at Berlin University of the Arts. Since then, Shiota has been based in Berlin, actively showing her works at biennales and exhibitions in art museums and galleries. Since 1993, she has exhibited her work in some 400 solo shows, group exhibitions, biennales, and other events.

In 2015, Shiota represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her installation The Key in the Hand. Consisting of a space filled with two boats, 180,000 keys and a tangled web of red thread, the work was met with great enthusiasm, catapulting her into the international limelight.

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Credit

Photo Thibault Carron

Credits and curatorial team

An exhibition organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

The exhibition is curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Iris Amizlev, Curator of Special Projects at the MMFA, is responsible for the Montreal presentation.

Chiharu Shiota

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Credits and curatorial team

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