Hammer Projects: Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972, Osaka) is a Berlin-based artist whose installations, sculpture, and performance art invoke psychogeographic spaces of memory, emotions, and the cyclical nature of life and death. Using red, black, or white yarn as a base material, Shiota often creates meticulously webbed environments that span the length of entire galleries and mimic organic forms such as cobwebs, veins, and fractals. Shiota also includes a range of found objects in her work such as wooden chairs, abandoned shoes, rusted keys, and used dresses as a strategy to implicate the viewer in the artist's personal narratives that are often universal experiences. Shiota will be the inaugural artist featured in the Hammer’s redesigned lobby and will envelop the area with a unique and visceral installation. Hammer Projects: Chiharu Shiota is organized by Erin Christovale, curator, with Nika Chilewich, curatorial assistant.