Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota creates immense installations with string, furniture, windows, and live people.
What I thought, on first glance, was a frenetic charcoal drawing, was actually a photograph of a white room, with a piano and chairs completely cobwebbed in black strings. The strings are attached to the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the furniture; they wind around each other and are woven in such a way that they define space and become shapes - or beings - themselves.
Other recurring items she uses are old windows from Berlin construction sites, hospital beds, children's school chairs, and shoes.
...but it's the string that gets me. A ball of yarn sitting on a desk is such a quiet, soft, unassuming thing. This artist turns it into a horrible, anxious tangle, a web of uneasiness...it almost looks organic, like an intelligent, plotting Spanish moss, ready to grow around you and swallow you up if you stay too still, too long.
