Chiharu Shiota & Yin Xiuzhen at the Hayward Gallery - London

Chiharu Shiota - Threads of Life

 

Two exhibitions on at the Hayward Gallery in London, until 3 May 2026, are Chiharu Shiota - Threads of Life, and Yin Xiuzhen - Heart to Heart.  Both feature large scale immersive textile installations.  Shiota draws on her own experiences and engulfs everyday objects in webs of wool to express universal human concerns. Yin Xiuzhen is renowned for her use of secondhand clothing, concrete, food and household ephemera in her sculptures to express ideas about the individual, society and memory.

Chiharu Shiota - Threads of Life

One of the things that intrigues me about such exhibitions is how they were installed.  So - Threads of Life (pictured above) took 10 people (five from the Hayward Installation Team and five from Chiharu Shiota's Studio) 12 days to install and the gallery attendant thought there were 4000 keys.  Apparently Shiota's team bring the top layer of threads from which everything else hangs.  I don't know whether Shiota oversaw the installation.  Threads of Life features red wool, a double door & keys.  Shiota believes that people are connected  by an invisible thread which she represents here with red wool. The keys represent both the security of locking the door to your home but also the possibility of opening doors to new possibilities.

Chiharu Shiota - State of Being (Dress)

Shiota uses found objects in her work that she comes across in her daily life.  She tells us that clothes carry memories and traces of the wearer and, for example, even without the wearer's presence, the dress above represents a state of being.  A web of threads fills the surrounding space.  When Shiota can no longer see where a single thread leads she considers the work complete.

Chiharu Shiota - Letters of Thanks

Letters of Thanks contains within it letters of gratitude and thanks that members of the public had left at the gallery. A collecting box for these was at the gallery entrance and letters could still be left.  Shiota thinks it is sometimes easier to write a letter of thanks than to say it.  Letters have been collected from around the world where iterations of this installation have already been exhibited.

Chiharu Shiota - During Sleep

When Shiota first moved to Germany she lived in several different places and would wake up disorientated and wonder where she was.  She began weaving yarn around herself to create her own cocoon. This idea is developed here in During Sleep. At certain times during the exhibition performers sleep in the beds.  Shiota likes the traces of existence they leave - crumpled sheets and dented pillows.  It's hard to imagine how they actually get through the threads to the beds though. 

Yin Xiuzhen - Heart to Heart

Yin Xiuzhen - International Flight & Portable Cities

International Flight & Portable Cities are exhibited as a baggage reclaim complete with a plane above. The suitcases are spilling open on the conveyor belt.  Each contains a different city that Yin Xiuzhen has visited.  The used clothing that is stitched into these cites was collected from inhabitants of those cities.

Yin Xiuzhen - A Heart to Heart

Unlike Portable Cities which have been shrunken to fit in suitcases, A Heart to Heart has been enlarged so you can walk and sit inside it.  Yin Xiuzhen hopes it will inspire people to have meaningful conversations.

Yin Xiuzhen - Wall Instrument No. 17

Yin Xiuzhen traps unusual materials in a ceramic base.  Here, in Wall Instrument No. 17, fabric and buttons emerge from the porcelain like flaws and fractures.  She sees this as representing the changing landscape of her home city of Beijing and also the tensions between society and the individual.

Yin Xiuzhen - Collective Subconscious

Collective Subconscious is a minibus that has been elongated with textile sections giving a caterpillar-like appearance.  Because it is constructed from clothing from 400 people, all with different experiences, Yin Xiuzhen sees it as a collective subconscious.  Inside, the colours of the clothing give a stained glass type of light.  A song by Wang Feng - Beijing, Beijing - is playing inside the minibus.  It reflects Chinese people's complicated relationship to a changing Beijing.  She sees this as a spiritual place.

These are fascinating exhibitions that are well worth a visit - go see...

Louise Bourgeois at the Hayward Gallery

Louise Bourgeois - Spider
Steel, tapestry, wood, glass, fabric, rubber, silver, gold, bone

 

Louise Bourgeois' exhibition "The Woven Child" is on at the Hayward Gallery until 15 May 2022 so if you're quick you've still got time to visit! 

Louise Bourgeois - Untitled
Needlepoint and aluminium

Louise Bourgeois was born on Christmas Day 1911.  She was the daughter of tapestry repairers and helped out from an early age. Louise first studied Philosophy at the University of Paris before deciding to become an artist.  In the 1930s she studied at a number of artists' studios and academies in Paris including with Fernand Léger, developing 3D work as well as paintings and drawings. In 1938 she opened her own gallery, met art historian Robert Goldwater, married and moved to New York.  She brought up 3 sons and had her first solo show in 1945 in New York and began exhibiting in shows with the Abstract Expressionists - Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning. Throughout her career she worked with many materials including wood, bronze, latex, plaster and marble.  In her 80s Bourgeois began to work with textiles especially those belonging to herself and her mother that she had saved.  Imagery relating to sewing, mending and the tools of that trade remained important in her work until her death, aged 98, in 2010. It is this work from her later years that forms the basis of "The Woven Child". 

Made from clothes that had significance from her life and hanging on bones, Bourgeois made the piece below to evoke the memory of people, places and events. Welded to the base are the words "Seamstress, Mistress, Distress, Stress" - words that reference her family history and the effect it had on her.

Louise Bourgeois - Untitled
Cloth, bone and steel

Bourgeois made many room-like pieces called cells containing compositions of personal items and sculptural elements relating to her personal history. In Cell VII a bronze model of her home together with both her and her mother's garments hanging in the room-like space suggest haunting memories...

Louise Bourgeois - Cell VII (detail)
Metal, glass, fabric, bronze, steel,wood, bones, wax & thread

Many of the composite works such as Eugénie Grandet, made up of 16 mixed media pieces (see the selection below) were my favourites.  Bourgeois was fascinated by the heroine of Balzac's novel - Eugénie Grandet.  Bourgeois thought her father was trying to turn her into Eugénie.  These pieces were made from hankies and tea towels from Bourgeois' trousseau to which she added haberdashery, artificial flowers and items from her clothing and her sewing box that she had kept, evoking unrealised desires and the passing of time...

Louise Bourgeois - Eugénie Grandet (part)

and I particularly liked her fabric books...

Louise Bourgeois - The Woven Child
Fabric and lithograph book

Louise Bourgeois - Ode a l'Oubli
Fabric and lithograph book

Fascinated by needles, Bougeois said, "When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I've always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle.  The needle is used to repair the damage.  It's a claim to forgiveness. It's never aggressive, it's not a pin."

Louise Bourgeois - Needle
Steel, flax, mirror & wood

These are just a small selection of the work on show at the Hayward.  Go see while there's still time.

The Hayward Gallery is on London's South Bank.  It has a nice cafe and a small shop.