From October 22, 2025 to June 28, 2026, the MAO Museum of Oriental Art in Turin will host the first major Italian monographic exhibition dedicated to Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (Osaka, 1972) entitled The Soul Trembles. Curated by Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo - from which the exhibition project originated - and Davide Quadrio, director of MAO (with Anna Musini and Francesca Filisetti, assistant curators), the exhibition represents the national debut of this important artistic production in an Asian art museum.
After having been staged in major international venues, including the Grand Palais in Paris, the Busan Museum of Art in South Korea, the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane and the Shenzhen Art Museum, the retrospective now comes to Turin in a new declination, enriched by site-specific works and interventions in direct dialogue with the museum’s permanent collections. In fact, the project develops organically through the MAO’s halls, including both the temporary exhibitions space and the exhibition galleries of the permanent collection, giving shape to a single large immersive installation.
The exhibition presents the entire span of Shiota’s artistic output: drawings, photographs, sculptures, and especially her celebrated environmental and monumental installations, composed of intricate weaves of red or black threads. These creations, which have stood out over the years for their ability to transform the exhibition space and engage the viewer in an immersive, meditative experience, are based on an aesthetic language that crosses the boundaries of matter to explore the invisible. The artist’s poetics focus on existential and universal themes such as memory, loss, identity, relationship with the other, life and death, themes rooted in personal experiences but taking on a collective resonance.
Prominent among the works on display is Uncertain Journey (2016), an installation composed of boat skeletons immersed in a dense web of red threads, evoking the uncertain path of existence and the unpredictability of the encounters that mark the journey. Another emblematic work is In Silence (2008), where a burned piano and some empty seats, wrapped in a tangle of black threads, create a scene suspended between silence and absence. The work Where Are We Going? (2017-2019) takes up the recurring motif of the boat, transforming it into a symbol of transit, search and displacement toward unknown horizons.
Particularly striking is Reflection of Space and Time (2018), a work that reflects on the theme of presence through the use of a dress and its mirrored image, evoking absence as a trace of being. The exhibition also includes Inside - Outside (2009), a reflection on the dialectic between interiority and the outside world, between the intimate sphere and the public dimension. Accumulation - Searching for the Destination (2021), a monumental installation composed of hundreds of suspended suitcases, ideally closes the itinerary, alluding to migration, memory and the condition of the contemporary traveler.
The layout of the exhibition takes the form of a unified and ever-changing exhibition project. As with every MAO exhibition, The Soul Trembles is conceived as a living organism, capable of renewal through a rich public program that will accompany the entire duration of the exhibition. On the calendar are performances, meetings, screenings, lectures and an educational program with workshops and activities aimed at schools, families and adult audiences, in order to broaden access and the cultural experience.
A bilingual catalog, in Italian and English, has been published by Silvana Editoriale to support the exhibition. The volume includes curatorial texts by Mami Kataoka and Davide Quadrio, contributions by international scholars, critical insights into Shiota’s work, and a rich iconographic apparatus.
Chiharu Shiota was born in Osaka in 1972 and has resided in Berlin for many years. Her international career is studded with major awards and participation in leading art exhibitions. In 2008 she received the Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. His works have been exhibited at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe, the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum in Wellington, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., among other venues.
He has also participated in numerous international exhibitions such as the Aichi Triennial (2022); the Oku-Noto International Art Festival (2017); the Biennale of Sydney (2016); the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (2009); and the Yokohama Triennial (2001). In 2015, Shiota was selected to represent Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale.
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| A major retrospective on Chiharu Shiota at MAO Turin: the invisible matter of the soul |
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