Chiharu Shiota: Who am I Tomorrow?

The installation with the evocative title Who am I Tomorrow? by Chiharu Shiota unfolds the fascinating impression of a living, oversized and independent organism. It seems to hover above the visitors, precisely fitted into the protective historical architecture of Kunstraum Dornbrin’s old assembly hall, connected to it by an uncountable number of red lines.

Shiota here turns the inside out. In the exhibition, the absence of the corresponding body reflects the exact opposite, namely the conscious presence of the body. This interior as the core of physical existence, as depicted here, finds its repeated representation in Shiota’s entire œuvre. The direct connection of the inside with the outside corresponds to a layering in the artistic work: the inner organism surrounded by the skin, protected by clothing, sheltered in the bed, the room, the flat/house, located in the city, the country, the continent, the world. Just that world in a universe where only on planet earth we can coexist with all other living beings and are responsible for keeping this community in balance and securing our living space. In this universal context, blood stands not only allegorically but factually for the individual’s information about origin, nation, family, health and illness. No less than the question of identity is posed here in all its complexity, with all its possible dissonances—in biographical and biological experiences, in behaviour and habit, in social and cultural context, in the consciously addressable and unconsciously effective, in the zeitgeist and across generations.