Threads of Life by Chiharu Shiota is another exhibition at the Hayward Gallery using textiles, this time thread and is a definite crowd pleaser – very Instagrammable.
The first installation, Threads of Life, is an amorphous red web with 20,000 suspended keys and a pair of open wooden doors in the centre, beckoning you to walk through them.
Letters of Thanks is just what it says: letters written to express gratitude suspended in a maze of red thread.
More letters are added at each reimagining, with some from London. It is a simple yet very sweet concept and I enjoyed the impression of weightlessness as I walked through.
During Sleep has black thread surrounding single beds as in a dormitory. Shiota moved 9 times in the first 3 years of living in Germany and would sometimes wake up not knowing where she was. Making a cocoon of yarn apparently gave her comfort.
Her work can be appreciated simply for its visual appeal which it often is. Look at the shadows thrown onto rumpled bedding for example.
