Artwork: Chiharu Shiota, Metamorphosis of Consciousness, 2025
A stunning installation by Chiharu Shiota titled Metamorphosis of Consciousness will feature in her upcoming exhibition, Echoes Between, at TEMPLON in New York. The installation was first created for another solo exhibition from March this year, Silent Emptiness, at Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing. Like many of Shiota’s artworks, the installation explores a signature theme, the idea of “presence in absence”. As Shiota says: “Absence does not signify disappearance but rather an integration into a vaster universe, re-entering the flow of time and forming new connections with all things.” This idea of states of consciousness is also expressed by a story of transformation “The Butterfly Dream” in an ancient foundational Taoist text Zhuangzi, authored by Zhuang Zhou, that inspired Shiota to create Metamorphosis of Consciousness. In the story Zhuang Zhou recalls a dream in which he is a butterfly, soaring through the sky with no recollection of his human form. Upon waking, he finds himself firmly in his human body, prompting the question: Is he a butterfly dreaming he’s Zhuang Zhou, or a man dreaming he’s a butterfly?
Surrounding the empty bed in Metamorphosis of Consciousness are hanging shimmering threads of lights and iridescent wings. The bed refers to the absence/presence of the physical body, but also the sleep-state and the process of dreaming referred to in Zhou’s tale. The threads of lights and wings suggest the altered perception through dreaming, of being conscious of other dimensions in one’s awareness of the self. And while Shiota refers to entering sleep as a journey beyond the body and the intimation of future death, it is life and Shiota’s own personal journey which shapes this installation and her art as a whole.
Echoes Between opens at TEMPLON, New York, November 6 2025 to January 22, 2026.