Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life

Shiota’s immersive web-like installations, fashioned from coloured thread and found objects, are the focus here. But her dazzling creations eclipse any autobiographical messages

During Sleep, 2026. installation view, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery. © DACS, London, 2026 and Chiharu Shiota.

Hayward Gallery, London
17 February – 3 May 2026

by DAVID TRIGG

Chiharu Shiota is lying naked on a clean white floor, her body covered by a chaotic tangle of plastic tubes coursing with a red, blood-like fluid. As she twitches sporadically, we hear the sound of a baby’s heartbeat in utero. Showing on the first-floor landing of the Hayward Gallery, this arresting video by the Berlin-based Japanese artist conjures thoughts of intravenous infusions, intensive care systems and unpleasant medical interventions. Titled Wall (2010), it references the artist’s experiences of ovarian cancer, pregnancy, miscarriage and childbirth, conflating them into one anxiety-ridden, autobiographical moving image work.

Shiota’s raw and deeply personal performances reflect the influence of Marina Abramović, under whom she studied in Berlin. She had wanted to study with the fibre artist Magdalena Abakanowicz but fortuitously muddled the names. Nevertheless, it is for her immersive environments created from expansive, web-like networks of coloured thread and found objects that she is best known and which are the focus of this, her first solo exhibition in a London public gallery.

Threads of Life, 2026, installation view, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery. © DACS, London, 2026 and Chiharu Shiota.

Shiota’s installations are often described as “dream-like” and Threads of Life (2026) is no exception. Filling the first room is a large, dense cloud of red threads that descend from the ceiling, down the walls and around a pair of old wooden doors that stand ajar in the centre of the space. Dangling from the strands are hundreds of old, tarnished keys, which the artist began collecting in 2015 having suffered a miscarriage and, not long after, losing her father. For her, the keys are deeply symbolic and imbued with meaning; they represent safety and protection, but also the boundless possibilities of human life. To that end, perhaps a closed door waiting to be unlocked may have been more appropriate?

Threads of Life, 2026, installation view, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery. © DACS, London, 2026 and Chiharu Shiota.

Each of Shiota’s keys is individual, with its own unique history. Linked together by her threads, they speak to the shared human experiences that connect us all, such as love, friendship, suffering and grief. Her use of red thread recalls the mystical Taoist belief in the “red thread of fate”, which suggests that certain individuals are destined to meet, bound together by an invisible red cord. Here, it becomes a metaphor for the complexities of human relationships, which can similarly be loose, tight, dense, knotted, or severed altogether. But in attempting to make tangible the indiscernible yet omnipresent connections that exist between people, the artist’s subtle poetics become eclipsed by the work’s spectacularity.

The theme of connectedness continues in the walk-through installation Letters of Thanks (2026) in which hundreds of sheets of paper containing notes of gratitude are suspended amid a field of cascading red threads. Written by members of the public from Brazil, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Japan and Britain, each letter expresses some form of thanks: a child’s appreciation for their granny; a daughter praising her father for being a role model; gratitude to friends and parents who have passed away. The work grew from Shiota’s desire to thank her father following his death and each time it is exhibited new letters are added. In a cynical culture as ours often is, it is a refreshing reminder that genuine thankfulness can be a profound act.

Letters of Thanks, 2026, installation view, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery. © DACS, London, 2026 and Chiharu Shiota.

Shiota started working with thread in the 2000s, before which she was a painter and then a performance artist. While there are no paintings here, a wall is filled with 460 small wax pastel and ink drawings – surreal and oneiric figurative works characterised by fluid mark-making, collaged elements and the artist’s distinctive stitched red thread. Created between 2023 and 2024 for the newspaper serialisation of Yoko Tawada’s novel Praktikantin (The Trainee), they illustrate the tale of a young Japanese woman who relocates to West Germany. The story of self-discovery draws on the author’s own experience of moving to Germany in the 80s, where she felt as if she had started a second life.

Drawings for Yoko Tawada's Praktikantin (The Trainee), 2023-24. Installation view, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery. © DACS, London, 2026 and Chiharu Shiota.

Shiota evidently had similar feelings and the series of photographs Try and Go Home (1997), made soon after her move to Europe, documents an early performance ostensibly reflecting her anxieties about being away from home and the desire to find a place of sanctuary. The images show her creating a womb-like hollow in an area of woodland and attempting to climb inside it. However, instead of fitting snugly into the cavity, she repeatedly rolls down an earthy slope, becoming dirtier and dirtier each time.

The desire to create a space of her own while living in Germany also informed Shiota’s large-scale installation During Sleep (2026), which fills the exhibition’s final room. Dense webs of entangled black threads cover the ceiling and walls, descending to envelop 10 steel-framed hospital beds, which are occasionally occupied by sleeping performers. The threads cast ominous shadows on the floor, adding to the installation’s uncanny atmosphere. If the exhibition’s first room offered an enchanting dream, then this feels like a nightmare. The work stemmed from the artist’s experience of moving house nine times in three years and the sensation of waking up in a new place, momentarily uncertain of where she was. As an attempt to evoke the disorienting space between sleep and the waking state, it succeeds very well. But it is a work best experienced alone, which is nigh on impossible here as you constantly try to dodge the selfie-snappers.

And herein lies the problem with Shiota’s dazzling environments. Though they are beautifully presented and enjoyably enchanting, their appeal tends to hover around surface-level. The Hayward’s busy spaces are filled with creators filming their next TikTok and Instagram reels. Here, art is not contemplated but reduced to spectacle, a visual trend, a viral hashtag. It would be unfair to wholly write off Shiota’s work as superficial, but the strongest pieces in this show are certainly the least photogenic.