Connected to the Universe

70% of the hammer price is allocated to support the non-profit foundation Spolu s odvahou, a member of the Bátor Tábor Family.

The multimedia work of world-renowned Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota straddles installation, performance, sculpture, and drawing. She is particularly acclaimed for her monumental installations made using woolen yarn interwoven with various objects, with the individual threads symbolizing interconnectedness and relationships on many different levels. She uses these threads evocatively to articulate an existential statement about the contemporary world. Shiota has been based in Berlin for many years, and she has achieved many international successes over the course of her career. In 2015, for example, she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, and she has had solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Grand Palais in Paris and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The work Connected to the Universe (11) is part of an extensive series of small works on canvas stitched with yarn, all of which bear the same name. In this series the yarn forms differently shaped patterns symbolizing the universe, which are then connected by fine threads to a delicate human figure. The work in this auction was shown in the exhibition Chiharu Shiota: The Unsettled Soul at Kunsthalle Praha. It depicts the universe as a bloated spherical form, which contrasts with the tiny reclining figure beneath it, thematizing the artist’s deeper interest in human existence and our place in the cosmos.