Anna Schwartz, Founder of Anna Schwartz Gallery, muses that there has been a thread connecting her and the gallery with Chiharu Shiota since they first met at Detached in 2011 in Tasmania at her installation In Silence, incorporating a burnt piano into a black web. In 2017, they again met in Venice when Shiota represented Japan with The Key in the Hand. Anna Schwartz Gallery is honoured to present State of Being: new works and the continuation of the connection. State of Being will exhibit concurrently with Shiota’s The Soul Trembles – curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo – at QAGOMA. A significant moment in Shiota’s twenty-five-year artistic practice, each of these Australian exhibitions are new touch points in Shiota’s devotion to exploring the tangle of memory and dreams and their transcendence into our waking lives.

State of Being will present works that span Shiota’s practice. Sculptural works, canvases, and a large-scale installation will envelope the gallery space, creating the absorbing effect that has come to be definitive of Shiota’s practice.

Image: State of Being (Diary), 2022, Metal frame, diary, thread, 50 x 50 x 30 cm