Beijing’s Red Brick Art Museum is playing host to Silent Emptiness, a major solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Chiharu Shiota. Curated by Yan Shijie, the show marks a defining moment in her career, expanding on her core concept of “presence in absence.” Through a host of newly-commissioned installations, Shiota captures the intangible with a divine, fibrous language, approaching the enlightenment in Eastern philosophy and confronting life and death head-on.
In “Metamorphosis of Consciousness,” emptiness is imagined as ethereal curtains of wings and lights. Drawing inspiration from Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s dream of becoming a butterfly, the installation is grounded by a serene sense of transformation and a coexistence between body and consciousness. “While each time we slip into sleep, it is a rehearsal for death – a journey beyond the body,” the artist noted.
Another standout piece, “Gateway to Silence,” envelops an ancient Tibetan Buddhist door with an intricate web of red threads. Thread, the artist’s signature material, serves as both “connectors and traces of rupture,” challenging the material, spiritual and temporal limits of our reality.
In this space, Shiota invites audiences to reflect on what remains after the body fades – a question, perhaps, of memory’s inevitable return. Through a poetic use of fiber and light, Shiota charts time’s invisible currents, leaving us to consider: “Absence does not signify disappearance but rather an integration into a vaster universe, re-entering the flow of time and forming new connections with all things.”
Silent Emptiness is now on view at the Red Brick Art Museum through August 31.
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