World War II Journal Entries Float in a Web of Blood-Red Yarn in Chiharu Shiota's 'Diary'

"In Two Home Countries, viewers enter a vivid world shaped by red thread, redolent of intertwined veins and blood vessels that attach to the floor, take on the shapes of houses, and spread through an entire room with a cloud-like aura of red-filled with written pages. Themes of memory, mortality, connection, identity, and belonging weave through Shiota's pieces, exploring "how pain, displacement, boundaries, and existential uncertainty shape the human condition and our understanding of self," the gallery says."

"An expansive, room-sized work titled 'Diary,' which is based on an earlier installation and commissioned anew for Two Home Countries, incorporates a dense web of yarn in which float pages of journals that once belonged to Japanese soldiers. Some were also penned by German civilians in the post-war era. "The accumulated pages reveal an expansive record of shared human existence across national boundaries," the gallery says."

"'When the body is gone, the objects which surrounded them remain behind,' Shiota says in a statement. 'As I wander the stalls of the markets in Berlin, I find especially personal items like photographs, old passports, and personal diaries. Once, I found a diary from 1946, which was an intimate insight into the person's life and experiences.' For Shiota, the power of these objects are revealed in how she feels the presence of writer's 'inner self.'"

Two Home Countries presents large-scale, immersive installations constructed from dense red thread that evoke veins, blood vessels, and house-like structures, spreading through entire rooms and forming cloud-like masses filled with written pages. A room-sized work titled 'Diary' suspends pages from journals once belonging to Japanese soldiers and to German civilians in the post-war era within a dense web of yarn, creating a material archive. The accumulated personal items — photographs, passports, diaries — convey the lingering presence of their owners’ inner selves. The works investigate memory, mortality, connection, identity, displacement, boundaries, and existential uncertainty across national lines.

Read at Colossal