There\u2019s a double bill going on at the Hayward Gallery, and the theme is fabrics: whether it\u2019s what we wear or the fabric of life itself. One ticket gains entry to two companion exhibitions \u2013 designed to be experienced one after the other, both shows are riffs on a similar theme.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
First up is Chinese sculpture artist\u00a0Yin Xiuzhen\u2019s Heart to Heart, an ode to used clothes by the Chinese sculpture artist. She describes clothing as a \u2018second skin\u2019 which collects the essence of every wearer. A garment, then, becomes a tapestry of all the bodies it\u2019s clothed. Memory is embedded into matter. This effect magnifies with the size of her installations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Xiuzhen\u2019s \u2018Portable Cities\u2019 series is a tribute to how every suitcase is a home, especially since many of us live out of our bags on the move. Unfolding over an airport luggage carousel stitched together using black and white clothes, suitcases contain different cities made out of the garments of its citizens. Hovering above is a gigantic aeroplane, similarly fashioned together. Suitcases, trunks, and other storage receptacles reappear throughout the show; to Xiuzhen \u2018home is no longer a fixed address but a collection of belongings packed and ready for transport.\u2019<\/p>\n
In the next room is \u2018Collective Subconscious (Blue)\u2019: a minibus cut in half and elongated into something resembling a caterpillar. Four-hundred pieces of clothing stitched together and stretched over a metal frame make up the body of this vehicle. As you peer in through the side door down the length of\u00a0the corridor, the artwork invites you to imagine the previous wearers of all\u00a0these garments. Their presence is palpable, despite the empty seats inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the show Xiuzhen grieves the disappearance of entire neighbourhoods she witnessed during the dizzying urbanisation of her native Beijing. She remembers the air being thick with cement dust. Wanting to preserve something amidst her ever-changing surroundings, she has folded up the clothes she grew up wearing, stacked them in a wooden trunk and poured concrete around them. \u2018Dress Box\u2019, thus,\u00a0is the union between the building materials of her home and self.<\/p>\n
A perplexingly dense tangle of crimson thread leaps from one wall to another, as if alive.<\/p>\n
Upstairs, the materials defining Xiuzhen\u2019s work are being unravelled in Chiharu Shiota\u2019s Threads of Life. A perplexingly dense tangle of crimson thread leaps from one wall to another across the whole space, as if alive. Dangling from this are hundreds of keys \u2013 maybe one of them fits the double doors standing in the middle of the room, upon which more thread encroaches. Walking through this room feels like searching through one\u2019s memory for the correct key that\u2019ll unlock something. Precariously constructed, all it\u2019ll take is someone tripping on their shoelaces to bring half the installation down \u2013\u00a0 this speaks to our own fragile mortality, something Shiota\u00a0grappled with\u00a0during her battle with ovarian cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the next room, countless strands of red thread cascade from the ceiling, carrying a rain of letters, the pages frozen mid-flutter. \u2018Letters of Thanks\u2019 reflects on how it\u2019s easier to bare one\u2019s soul in writing than in speech. With every exhibition of this artwork,\u00a0Shiota has invited people to share thank-you letters which eventually end up as part of the piece, creating a grateful chorus of voices from Brazil, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Japan, and now London.<\/p>\n
Shiota can\u2019t explore memory without thinking about home \u2013 a shaky concept for the artist who moved house nine times in three years when she migrated to Germany from Japan. \u2018During Sleep\u2019 resulted from that unsettled period. Ten white hospital beds are arranged in rows, consumed by a thick web of black thread. The shadowy mass climbs down walls and fills the room like the descent of sleep. Seen through this haze, the other visitors look like vague figures floating through a dream.<\/p>\n
On top of the excellent value for money\u00a0you get\u00a0from\u00a0both exhibitions,\u00a0as well as\u00a0their entrancing scale, the installations encourage you to engage with how they\u2019ve been constructed and exhibited. You start looking for the staple pins securing Shiota\u2019s threads to the wall or the intricate stitching that transforms a pile of clothes into Xiuzhen\u2019s monuments. The art is immersive, while encouraging you to peek behind the curtain.<\/p>\n
Many audiences will be left pondering the ideas surrounding sustainability posed in the works of both artists. But more universally, both shows tap into something invisible yet ever-present; whether it\u2019s the interconnectedness of all things, or how history moves forward one wardrobe change at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a double bill going on at the Hayward Gallery, and the theme is fabrics: whether it\u2019s what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1897,166885,6225,6485,6486,1120,96,166884,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-465386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-art-installation","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-more-recommended","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}