Beijing’s Pink Brick Artwork Museum is enjoying host to Silent Vacancy, a significant solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Chiharu Shiota. Curated by Yan Shijie, the present marks a defining second in her profession, increasing on her core idea of “presence in absence.” By way of a number of newly-commissioned installations, Shiota captures the intangible with a divine, fibrous language, approaching the enlightenment in Japanese philosophy and confronting life and demise head-on.
In “Metamorphosis of Consciousness,” vacancy is imagined as ethereal curtains of wings and lights. Drawing inspiration from Chinese language thinker Zhuangzi’s dream of changing into a butterfly, the set up is grounded by a serene sense of transformation and a coexistence between physique and consciousness. “Whereas every time we slip into sleep, it’s a rehearsal for demise – a journey past the physique,” the artist famous.
One other standout piece, “Gateway to Silence,” envelops an historical Tibetan Buddhist door with an intricate net of pink threads. Thread, the artist’s signature materials, serves as each “connectors and traces of rupture,” difficult the fabric, non secular and temporal limits of our actuality.
On this house, Shiota invitations audiences to mirror on what stays after the physique fades – a query, maybe, of reminiscence’s inevitable return. By way of a poetic use of fiber and light-weight, Shiota charts time’s invisible currents, leaving us to contemplate: “Absence doesn’t signify disappearance however relatively an integration right into a vaster universe, re-entering the movement of time and forming new connections with all issues.”
Silent Vacancy is now on view on the Pink Brick Artwork Museum by means of August 31.
