{"id":382124,"date":"2026-04-04T19:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T19:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/382124\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T19:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T19:59:14","slug":"blood-mud-and-cobwebs-create-ache-of-heartbreak-at-asian-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/382124\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood, mud and cobwebs create ache of heartbreak at Asian Art Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOne chopstick is \u2018I,\u2019\u201d said the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, \u201cbut you need two chopsticks to eat.\u201d She made the remark in front of the three videos of her performance art pieces (\u201cWall,\u201d \u201cBathroom,\u201d and \u201cEarth and Blood\u201d) in her new exhibition \u201cTwo Home Countries<\/a>\u201d opened April 3 at the San Francisco\u2019s Asian Art Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They are the most difficult pieces in the show, grappling with themes of miscarriage, cancer and death with the raw, physical materials of blood and mud. Even though the pieces emerged from her intensely private experiences, she hopes that by representing the personal through art, she can make the \u201cI\u201d into a \u201cWe\u201d \u2014 just like her example of the chopsticks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AArtist Chiharu Shiota. Photo by Julie Zigornis<\/p>\n

Yet Shiota is most well-known for her pieces crafted from intricate webs of yarn, which is how \u201cTwo Home Countries\u201d opens. Walking through a red-laced tunnel stuck with pages of text \u2014 which are authentic copies of diary entries from Japanese soldiers during World War II \u2014 the viewer has a transportive feeling of being sucked into another space and time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took ten people two weeks to install the work \u201cDiary,\u201d which used 20 miles of red yarn and was crafted specifically for the Asian Art Museum. The network of yarn embodies the soldiers\u2019 memories and also echoes the form of neural networks with its crisscrossing patterns, an intentional choice by the artist. Once again, an intimate interior of the body becomes externalized \u2014 and also reflected in shadows on the gallery floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shiota already experienced immense success with her intricate yarn designs<\/a> at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Yet it was not a celebratory time; she also was suffering from a diagnosis of ovarian cancer. It led her to explore this subject at length in her work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AChiharu Shiota, Out of my Body, 2022. Installation \u2013 leather, bronze. Aros Museum, Aarhus, Denmark. Photo Anders Sune Berg. \u00a9 ARS, New York, 2025 and the artist <\/p>\n

The piece \u201cBeyond My Body,\u201d which includes a bronze cast of the artist\u2019s feet with a porous suede net funneling away from them, emerged from Shiota\u2019s experience of chemotherapy. \u201cMy feet are standing,\u201d she said, \u201cbut my body, my soul is not connected anymore.\u201d The theme carries over into \u201cCell,\u201d in which glass and fabric objects suggest cancerous growths with their fragility \u2014 in contrast to the steadfastness of Shiota\u2019s bronze cast feet in \u201cBeyond My Body.\u201d Shadows from the intricate web are again cast onto the floor, creating another layer to the work.<\/p>\n

The color red dominates the exhibition: in yarn, in thread, in leather, in blood. For Shiota, it symbolizes many things. \u201cIt\u2019s the family, the nationality, the religion, the culture,\u201d she said. It\u2019s encoded in the piece the exhibition is named after.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo Home Countries\u201d symbolizes the tension between Shiota\u2019s native Japan and adopted Germany; in each country, she misses the other. Yet despite the exhibition\u2019s namesake artwork, it\u2019s the visceral themes of body, blood and memory \u2014 life and death \u2014 that predominate more so than any sense of home-seeking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s rare to find an artist who is so confident, so comfortable using their own very private experiences as the vehicle for these universalizing aspects of life,\u201d said Robert Mintz, chief curator at the Asian Art Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked if she enjoys teaching, the artist was quick to say she doesn\u2019t \u2014 she prefers to have her art do the speaking for her. Perhaps that is part of how she has been able to encode her deepest meaning in her work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Shiota is interested in how objects can carry on memory, she also turns the question inward: \u201cI often question myself, what will remain when my body is gone?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"RedChiharu Shiota, Sketch for Two Home Countries (2025). \u00a9 ARS, New York, 2025 and the artist\"AA selection of diaries for Diary (forthcoming installation, 2025) at Japan Society. Berlin, 2025. Photograph by Sunhi Mang\"BareChiharu Shiota, Wall, 2010. Performance Video \u2013 tube, red liquid. HD DSLR video, color, sound, 3\u201939\u201d. \u00a9 ARS, New York, 2025 and the artist\"TwoRobert Mintz, chief curator at the Asian Art Museum, and artist,
\nChiharu Shiota. Photo by Julie Zigoris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOne chopstick is \u2018I,\u2019\u201d said the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, \u201cbut you need two chopsticks to eat.\u201d She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,4540],"class_list":["post-382124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-museums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}