{"id":989,"date":"2025-05-21T09:50:49","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T09:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/?p=989"},"modified":"2025-05-21T15:25:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T15:25:51","slug":"chiharu-shiota-suspends-butterfly-wings-over-warm-bed-at-beijings-red-brick-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/21\/chiharu-shiota-suspends-butterfly-wings-over-warm-bed-at-beijings-red-brick-art-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"chiharu shiota suspends butterfly wings over warm bed at beijing\u2019s red brick art museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chiharu Shiota\u2019s major exhibition at red brick art museum<\/h2>\n

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Chiharu Shiota<\/strong><\/a> unveils Silent Emptiness, a major solo exhibition<\/strong><\/a> at Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing<\/a>, <\/strong>running until August 31st, 2025. Curated by Yan Shijie, the show marks a significant milestone in Shiota\u2019s career, presenting newly commissioned site-specific installations<\/strong><\/a>, infused with Eastern philosophy, personal memory, and spiritual reflection. Responding to the museum\u2019s architecture, where Chinese garden aesthetics meet Western order, Shiota transforms the space into a web of introspection, with emptiness transforming into a charged field of presence, connecting the threads of life, death, and time.<\/p>\n

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Shiota\u2019s cross-cultural lens is on full display in Metamorphosis of Consciousness, inspired by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi\u2019s dream of becoming a butterfly. Here, delicate butterfly wings and fairy lights are suspended over a bed radiating with phantom warmth. \u2018While each time we slip into sleep, it is a rehearsal for death\u2014a journey beyond the body,\u2019<\/em>\u00a0the artist\u00a0reflects.<\/strong> Emptiness becomes liberation, the moment between inhale and exhale, between form and formlessness.<\/p>\n

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Metamorphosis of Consciousness at Red Brick Museum | image by Sunhi Mang, courtesy of Chiharu Shiota<\/p>\n

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Fiber as self weaving identity through absence<\/h2>\n

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Across the exhibition, fiber becomes the conduit for Shiota\u2019s ongoing search for self, translating identity, loss, and rebirth into tactile language. In conversation with curator Yan Shijie, the Japanese-born artist<\/strong><\/a> describes her experience of displacement using the metaphor of salt crystallization. Invisible in Japan, her identity became distinct only after relocating to Berlin. The residue of memory, like salt, crystallizes through absence.<\/p>\n

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At the heart of the Red Brick Art Museum\u2019s exhibition is Gateway to Silence, where a towering Tibetan Buddhist door anchors an eruption of red threads that slice through walls and spill into the gallery. The threads, Chiharu Shiota\u2019s signature material, embody karma, rupture, and spiritual continuity. Each filament becomes a question stretched across dimensions. How do we move through the world when the body disappears, but memory remains?<\/p>\n

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Thread, in Shiota\u2019s world, also charts time\u2019s invisible currents. In Echoes of Time, three rough stones erupt with wave-like black thread structures that sweep across the gallery like constellations. Rooted in Eastern cosmology, these ancient rocks serve as vessels of memory, monuments to erosion, transformation, and the slow breathing of the Earth.<\/p>\n

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In Rooted Memory, a salvaged wooden fishing boat from Xingtai bears a tree sprouting from its cracked hull. Red ropes pour from the canopy like rainfall, reconnecting the cycle: boat becomes tree, origin meets return. The installation functions as a meditation on nature\u2019s reclamation, human ephemerality, and the poetic logic of material decay.<\/p>\n

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inspired by Zhuangzi\u2019s dream of becoming a butterfly | image by Sunhi Mang, courtesy of Chiharu Shiota<\/p>\n

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archival work completes Silent Emptiness<\/h2>\n

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Shiota also presents Multiple Realities, where empty dresses turn quietly above dark water, their mirrored reflections evoking a spectral duet. These garments, extensions of the self, dance in silence, questioning what remains when the body is gone. For Shiota, absence is not disappearance, but \u2018a re-entry into the flow of time, forming new connections with all things.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

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Manuscripts, video works, and archival material that trace Shiota\u2019s evolution from early performance art in Japan to international recognition accompany the installations. Bathroom (1999) and Wall (2010) confront displacement and bodily boundaries through acts of cleansing, confinement, and the intimate violence of red thread, cutting, wrapping, and binding.<\/p>\n

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Silent Emptiness feels like walking through someone\u2019s faded memories made of thread, dust, and worn objects coming together to show how even what\u2019s gone still holds us.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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delicate butterfly wings and fairy lights are suspended over a bed | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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emptiness becomes liberation | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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Chiharu Shiota presents newly commissioned site-specific installations | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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Gateway to Silence | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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a towering Tibetan Buddhist door anchors an eruption of red threads | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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each filament becomes a question stretched across dimensions\u00a0| image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum <\/p>\n

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in Echoes of Time, three stones erupt with black thread structures | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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these ancient rocks serve as vessels of memory | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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Rooted Memory | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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a wooden fishing boat bears a tree sprouting from its cracked hull | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/p>\n

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red ropes pour from the canopy like rainfall | image courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum <\/p>\n

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project info:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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name:<\/strong> Silent Emptiness<\/p>\n

artist:<\/strong> Chiharu Shiota<\/a> | @chiharushiota<\/a><\/p>\n

location:<\/strong> Red Brick Art Museum<\/a> | @redbrickartmuseum<\/a>, Beijing, China<\/p>\n

curator:<\/strong> Yan Shijie<\/p>\n

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dates:<\/strong> March 23rd \u2013 August 31st, 2025<\/p>\n

The post chiharu shiota suspends butterfly wings over warm bed at beijing\u2019s red brick art museum<\/a> appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chiharu Shiota\u2019s major exhibition at red brick art museum \u00a0 Chiharu Shiota unveils Silent Emptiness, a major solo exhibition at Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, running until August 31st, 2025. Curated by Yan Shijie, the show marks a significant milestone in Shiota\u2019s career, presenting newly commissioned site-specific installations, infused with Eastern philosophy, personal memory, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1002,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/1002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.www.good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}