Year: 2021
Medium: water-soluble wax pastel, ink, thread on paper
Dimensions: 20 x 25 cm (7 7/8 x 9 7/8 in.)
Acquired from KENJI TAKI GALLERY, 2022
This work is one of a series of drawings created at where Shiota stayed in Shanghai when she was experiencing a long period of quarantine for an exhibition in 2021. The same series consecutively shows several motifs, including beds resembling a hotel room, her own limbs, chairs, windows, a crowd and house, etc. In this particular work, there are about 10 people gathered closely together. Suppose that people gather in the middle of the strict measures, it could represent the scene of an inspection or decontamination activities. Confronted the fact that people have kept a distance from each other due to the pandemic, Shiota probably would not have felt nothing about it. Shiota’s work often uses red-dyed threads, which directly imitate the vascular tissue within the body, but at the same time they are also threads of a metaphor for blood ties and destiny. The meaning of red threads is carried over into this work as well. The several extending black threads that link between the chests of several individuals and the netlike depictions with red ink are all spreading out from the only person drawn at the center with a red outline. Perhaps it is representing the hope that even people cannot touch each other, their hearts can still be connected.
