The MAO – Museum of Oriental Art in Turin presents the exhibition Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum and originator of the project, and Davide Quadrio, Director of MAO, with curatorial assistance by Anna Musini and Francesca Filisetti.
This major monographic exhibition dedicated to the Japanese artist arrives at MAO as a national preview—and for the first time ever in a museum of Asian art—after being hosted by prestigious international institutions including the Grand Palais in Paris, the Busan Museum of Art, the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, and the Shenzhen Art Museum.
The exhibition is a wide-ranging and complex project of great expressive power, tracing Shiota’s entire body of work through drawings, photographs, sculptures, and some of her most celebrated environmental and monumental installations. Often inspired by personal experiences, Chiharu Shiota’s works explore the intangible—memories, emotions, images and dreamlike visions—offering spaces of silence and contemplation, while raising questions about universal and existential concepts such as identity, relationships with others, life and death. Transcending temporal and spatial boundaries, her works engage the most intimate and vulnerable aspects of the human being.
Her best-known installations, made of interwoven red or black threads forming imposing structures, envelop the spaces in which they are placed, transforming their volumes and guiding the viewer through an immersive experience in which fascination alternates with unease, movement with stillness.
The exhibition project is conceived as a single large installation that expands throughout the spaces of MAO, from the temporary exhibition galleries to the permanent collection galleries, engaging in direct dialogue with the Museum’s works. Alongside a series of drawings, sculptures, photographs and installations, the exhibition includes site-specific interventions and new works created especially by the artist for the occasion.
Among the works on display are some of Shiota’s most iconic installations: Where Are We Going? (2017), in which the recurring motif of the boat evokes visions of uncertain lives and futures; Uncertain Journey (2016), composed of boat skeletons arranged in a space enveloped by vivid red threads, suggesting the many encounters that may occur at the end of each journey; In Silence (2008), where a burned piano and several seats for an imaginary audience, immersed in a web of black threads, convey the silence that follows destruction; Reflection of Space and Time (2018), which uses a dress and its mirrored image to reflect on presence within absence; Inside – Outside (2009), focused on the concept of separation between inside and outside, private and public, East and West; and finally the monumental Accumulation – Searching for the Destination (2021), composed of hundreds of swinging suitcases, symbols of memory, movement and migration, and an archetype of the journey undertaken by each of us.
As is customary in MAO’s exhibition projects, Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles is conceived as a living organism and, throughout its duration, offers the public a rich programme of musical and performative events, including screenings, talks and lectures. Over the course of the exhibition, an educational programme and workshops for schools, families and visitors of all ages—from young children to adults—will also be activated.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual Italian–English catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale, with texts by Mami Kataoka and Davide Quadrio, including contributions from international experts offering in-depth insights into the artist’s work, as well as a rich visual section.
Starting from 19 November 2025, a new, previously unseen work by Chiharu Shiota will be on view in the Agorà space at MUDEC in Milan. Presented as part of the exhibition project Il senso della neve, the installation The Moment the Snow Melts, curated by Sara Rizzo, uses the fragility of snow as a metaphor to reflect on human relationships and on how they inevitably begin and end.
All exhibition content will be available in International Sign Language (IS) throughout the exhibition route, thanks to the collaboration with the Turin Institute for the Deaf.
