Back in Norway & back to work. The coming week I will be traveling to see & write about a new installation by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, at KODE in Bergen. Chiharu Shiota gained wide international recognition after having represented Japan at the 56^th Venice Biennial in 2015, with an installation called “The key in the hand”. Chiharu Shiota created a large-scale installation with the whole exhibition space filled with red yam. Attached to the end of each piece of yam, suspended from the ceiling, is a key. There are also two boats on the floor beneath the yam and the hanging keys.

Here is Chiharu Shiota presenting “The Key in the Hand” in her own words

I know a bit about Chiharu Shiota work from before, and mentioned her name here at this blog some years ago, but I have never seen any of her installations live, and so I am very much looking forward to my little trip.

Chiharu Shiota 

Born in Japan in 1972, Shiota initially studied painting at Seika University, Kyoto. During this time she undertook an exchange residency at Canberra School of Art, Australia. It was here that she began to explore the boundaries of painting, staging her first performance Becoming Painting (1994) in which she used her body as a canvas.

She moved to Germany in 1996 and continued her studies, firstly in Braunschweig and later Berlin, where she continues to live today.