"Stairway", from Chiharu Shiota's official website.
The Mattress Factory will host an interactive event with Chiharu Shiota's "Traces of Memory"on February 6, as part of its regular Artlab series. From the museum's website:
Contribute to a small scale installation inspired by Chiharu Shiota’s, Trace of Memory - decide how to string your own yarn web to trap ideas and memories in a box! Hands-on, drop in, for all ages!The Chiharu Shiota exhibition first went up in October 2013. The museum's website summarized the installation at the time thus:
Twice a month, on the first and third Saturdays, visitors are invited to participate in a range of art-making activities that illuminate the creative process of in-residence artists. Projects and materials are developed to complement current and ongoing exhibitions. This program is free with museum admission and highly recommended for individuals or families with children of all ages.
Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood and dealing with anxiety. Shiota explores the relationship between waking life and memories through hauntingly beautiful installations that incorporate everyday objects like shoes, pianos and hospital beds encased in webs of yarn. Stretched in multi-layers in a gallery space, Shiota weaves disorienting cocoons of black yarn that reflect the artist’s desire to ‘draw in the air’.The event, and the exhibit, is at the Mattress Factory's satellite gallery, located at 516 Sampsonia Way (map), a few houses down from the museum's main building and down the street from the City of Asylum.
The site-specific installation of new works by Shiota will fill the eight rooms in the building at 516 Sampsonia Way—a 19th-century row home with a storied past—which is suited to the artist’s work. Its interior is cosmetically untouched; the raw condition of the building lends itself well to reflections on the past and the conjuring of memories.