The Hayward Gallery in London is hosting two concurrents exhibitions featuring large-scale installations by Chiharu Shiota and Yin Xiuzhen, shaped around textiles and everyday objects: Threads of Life and Heart to Heart. The exhibitions are on view from 17 February to 3 May.
Both artists use ordinary materials to create contemplative spaces that reflect on memory, identity, and shared human experience. The exhibitions are presented as part of the institution’s 75th anniversary programme and continue the Southbank Centre’s long-standing focus on immersive installations that draw viewers into the work.
Curator Yung Ma notes that the two exhibitions bring together artists from different generations and geographies. Although their styles differ, both share a common sensibility that connects personal experiences with broader human narratives.
Chiharu Shiota’s Networks of Memory
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, who lives in Berlin, is presented on the gallery’s upper floor with her first major public exhibition in London. The artist is known for her monumental installations made of thousands of intertwined wool threads. Within these vast thread networks appear everyday objects such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs, and clothing. These works symbolize the invisible connections between life, memory, and loss. Visitors can move through the web-like structures, as the space becomes enveloped almost like a cocoon.
Shiota often works with red, black, or white thread, describing her process as “drawing in space with thread.” According to the artist, these works express how people are connected to one another through invisible ties. Many of her pieces emerge from personal experiences—such as the loss of her father—and reflect on what it means to be human.
The exhibition also includes documentation of Shiota’s early performance works and around 400 drawings created in collaboration with writer Yoko Tawada, where the artist’s characteristic red threads also appear.
Stories Emerging from Clothes: Yin Xiuzhen
On the gallery’s lower floor, a comprehensive exhibition spanning the career of Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen is presented. An important figure in contemporary Chinese art since the 1990s, the artist works with everyday materials such as cement, ceramics, and especially used clothing. Through these objects, she explores themes of identity, memory, and social transformation.
At the center of the exhibition stands a large installation in the shape of a human heart, constructed from donated second-hand clothes. Visitors are able to enter the installation.
Each garment carries traces of the life of the person who once wore it, symbolizing how individual stories come together to form a collective human experience. For the artist, the heart is not only an organ but also a means of establishing connections between people. For this reason, the exhibition is conceived as a “heart-to-heart” dialogue with the viewer.
Installations that Transform Architecture into Experience
According to gallery director Ralph Rugoff, these two exhibitions continue the Hayward Gallery’s tradition of installations that actively engage with the building’s architecture.
Both artists transform ordinary materials—such as thread, clothing, furniture, and personal belongings—into powerful and poetic artistic expressions. Their works question the tension between personal and collective memory as well as the transience of modern life. Ultimately, these installations draw visitors into an emotional and intellectual spatial experience, prompting reflection on how individual lives intersect within broader social and emotional structures.
