Chiharu Shiota: The Key in the Hand
A Place Where Memories Return
Hitoshi Nakano
The breezes of love are all-pervasive
By Shijimi River, where love-drowned guests
Like empty shells, bereft of their senses,
Wander the dark ways of love
Lit each night by burning lanterns,
Fireflies that glow in the four seasons,Stars that shine on rainy nights.
By Plum Bridge, blossoms show even in summer.
––Chikamatsu Monzaemon, “Scene Two: Inside the Tenma House,”
Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki; trans. by Donald
Keene)
This passage from Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki)
led to my first meeting with Chiharu Shiota. The first time we actually
met was in 2004, and at the time, I was trying to create theatre pieces
by combining contemporary art, contemporary music, and Japanesetraditional performing arts at a concert hall and searching for people towork as staff and cast members in these productions. As the title
Sonezaki Shinju suggests, the plot concerns a double suicide andaddresses questions of life and death. This inspired me to commission
Shiota, who had already started making works based on the themes of“life” and “death,” to create a stage design, one of the most importantelements in a theatre piece. In 2001, Shiota had made a stunning debutin Japan with Memory of Skin, a work consisting of a number of gigantic
dresses caked with mud, at the Yokohama International Triennale ofContemporary Art. And since she also happened to be from Osaka, thebirthplace of bunraku puppet theatre, this served as another bond
between us.
Though I assembled a staff, including a scriptwriter and bunraku
director, for my experiment based on Sonezaki Shinju, the production
ultimately never came to fruition for a variety of reasons. It did,
however, lead to From in Silence, Shiota’s largest exhibition until thatpoint, at the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery in 2007. This opportunity tomeet Shiota again provided me with very thrilling experiences via works
such as In Silence (2007) and From the Light (2007). This text is ineffect an attempt to verbalize the experiences I have had with Shiota’s
works in as much detail as possible on the occasion of The Key in theHand, her exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
***
Chiharu Shiota perceives the entire aspect of an exhibition space with avibrant, radical, and warm viewpoint, selecting a variety of materials tocompletely transform the space into a work. In the past, she has
incorporated materials such as dresses, beds, shoes, and suitcases,
which are imbued with traces and memories their use in everyday life.
Constructing and completing a space, transcend linguistic, cultural, andhistorical contexts and socio-political conditions, Shiota’s works havemade a deep impression on viewers all around the world. Thus far, they
have been presented in approximately 200 exhibitions - including theone at the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery - in Japan, Europe, the U.S.,
Middle East, Oceania, and Asia. When we experience her works, weare stunned to see how deeply they permeate our inner world. The
beauty, freshness, vibrance, and power of her works quietly but strongly
infiltrates our hearts and bodies. Shiota uses the term “philosophy of
the instant” to explain the expressive power of the installation we
experience when we enter the exhibition spaces that she constructs.

Though the large-scale installation is a format that has long since lostits novelty at the Venice Biennale, Shiota’s works still seem so freshbecause of the questions she raises about life and death with thisphilosophy of the instant.
At the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Shiota
presents a new installation titled The Key in the Hand in the Japan
Pavilion.
The Key in the Hand is a single work consisting of two elements madeup of different materials and methods that are being presented in thesecond-floor gallery and the piloti-lined space located directly
underneath outside on the first floor. The gallery houses an installation
made up of a massive number of keys, which were actually used bypeople in the past, red yarn, and two old wooden boats. Meanwhile, on
the first floor, there are videos in which children talk about memories
from before and immediately after their birth, and a display of aphotograph of a child holding a key in the palms of her hands.
The instant we step into the gallery we come face-to-face with an oldboat with a raised bow pointed toward the entrance and a profusion of
red yarn so great that it completely fills the space, measuring about 15
meters across and five meters high. On the ends of each piece of yarn,suspended from the ceiling, are a wide range of keys. The sight is a likea red storm with a heavy rain of keys pouring down from the sky. As wemove further into the room, we find that behind the first boat is anotherone, which is also covered and enshrined with red yarn. Unlike the boat
near the entrance, this one is parallel to the floor, but the positions ofboth boats recall a scene in which they are sailing through the open sea
as they are tossed by the waves in a storm of red rain. From the boats
alone, we imagine an old person who has retired after a long life and istrying to make the most out of the time that they have left. But from theboat with the raised bow, we feel the strength to steadily move forward
through the blustery red storm and are overwhelmed by its awesome
power.
Next, we go downstairs to the outdoor pilotis on the first floor. There, wefind a rectangular box measuring 3.5 meters high, four meters long, andthree meters deep, and gaze at the works that are displayed on its
sides. On one side is a photograph of a child’s palm holding a key. On
the opposite side there are monitors showing videos of the interviews
Shiota did with children at several kindergartens in Berlin. The children
talk about their memories from before and immediately after they wereborn. These primal memories of the world, conveyed by children who
have at last reached the age where they can speak, are at times filledwith lucid details and other times fanciful impressions.
As we listen to the children relating their memories with such freshness,
we cannot help but be reminded of human memory as a whole,eternally carved into history and handed down to each new generation.
It was Shiota’s questions that opened the door to human memory. And
through these questions, the children must have recognized the keys ofmemory that they had been handed. They hold the keys in the palms of
their little hands. The keys might open memories to a grandfather,
grandmother, or parent or memories of a forebear that were handed
down to them. But their palms, a receptacle formed by placing theirhands together, are a bit small to receive such a huge number ofmemories from their ancestors. All their little hands can really handle isa single key. Having been entrusted with the key, what awaits them
now is the world on the second floor where a strong red storm blows, aworld in which, a huge number of keys, or memories, pours down,
urging us to delve further into it. The children are equipped with words,
functioning like boats to help them navigate through the world, but therules of speech that they have at last acquired are an unreliable means

of steer through the sea. Though battered and no longer serviceable,
the boats were crafted and handed down by countless forebears andthey have endured countless storms. They are a gift, given to thechildren by our forebears in the hope that our memories will help us
overcome numerous hardships and make the voyage smoother. While
helping them dodge the blast of keys (memories) that pours down fromthe sky and the torrent of memories (countless red pieces of yarn), thetwo boats slowly, silently, powerfully escort the children across the seaof memories.
At the end of the journey, are the children’s words, emanating fromhuman memory, the words of the living or of the dead? Before realizing
it, I find myself confronting the border between life and death.
By referring to a variety of works dealing with keys from every era andregion, we come to understand that holding a key signifies a kind of
authority, proprietorial right, power, and wealth, as well as urging theholder to make an active choice in using it. This is evident from thedepiction of St. Peter’s keys in Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment, afresco on the wall of the Sistine Chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica, andDante’s Divine Comedy, as well as the key in Kukai’s Buddhist text
Hizohoyaku (The Precious Key to the Sacred Treasury). As in these two
examples, it is up to the children to decide whether to use or refuse thekey they are given in The Key in the Hand, and this is the question they
are faced with when they receive the key.
But we also realize that as viewers we are also being confronted withthe same question. Accepting the choice that they have been given, thechildren’s words, describing primal memories in the video, invite us tothe border between life and death, and they also require that we makea choice. The choice is whether to accept their words without knowing
whether they are the words of the living or the words of the dead. By

coming into contact with the children’s words, driven to discuss life anddeath, we are also unwittingly driven to the threshold of life and death. It
is not only the children who dive into the storm-like exhibition space
filled with red yarn and keys, but also the viewers.
Urged by the children to make a choice, what do we confront in the
middle of the storm? Our own nature. In the midst of this storm of keys
or primal memories, how should we navigate and where should wehead? The choice is a question of identity, a question of what it means
to be ourselves.
***
We often use words related to keys, including password, key man, andkeyword. And the concept of a key is also linked to a variety of scenes,
including everything from watchwords to spells and codes. We also
make regular use of things called “keys” that have a variety of forms,
such as pieces of metal, cards, and fingerprints, when we open the
doors to our homes and offices. Though they are so familiar that we do
not notice, all of these keys are somehow related to crossing athreshold. A threshold not only demarcates the inside and outside of agate, it is a singular place which, as borne out by various legends fromaround the world, is seen as a spirit world. A key is an important toolthat helps create this place and at the same time plays an essential partin of the ritual opening and crossing of the threshold. In Shiota’s works,
we constantly catch sight of the realm that lies between life and death.
As I mentioned, Shiota’s main theme has long been life and death. In
recent years, prompted by the deaths of important people in her life,
Shiota has once again come face-to-face with life and death, which,though universal, each of us is destined to experience on our own. Yet
without averting her eyes from the pain, Shiota has purified andsublimated her experiences and emotions in her work. The keys that
she chose as a material for this exhibition are both tools that we
commonly use in daily life and things that can be used to pursue theinevitable replacement of life with death. While on the one hand, keys
are commonly used to protect valuable things like our houses, assets,
and families, they accumulate a great number of memories through ourdealings with important things and by embracing them in the warmth of
our hands. At some point, we also entrust them to important people. On
the other hand, while a key might seem to contain a sense of warmth,
to the children who receive them, there is also a deeply disquieting
aspect linked to the sense of unknowing that accompanies age.
In The Key in the Hand, what do children who are first exposed to theexistence of keys by Shiota think when they use them to open the doorof human memory? Do the first words they utter directly convey what
they have seen and felt? A key is something that would not seem toexist within them. Though the words, which serve as “proof of life” after
everything else has been nullified, are unmistakably those of thechildren, the eerie quality of their voices causes us to lose track of who
is speaking and whose life the words refer to. Coming into contact withthe uncanny in this way also leads us to a conflict between our origins
and our identity. By experiencing the work, this confrontation with thefluctuating quality of life also provides us with a view of life and death –things that Shiota constantly faces.
Finally, when we further consider The Key in the Hand, it is important tothink about how we should behave when, or after, we come into contact
with Shiota’s work. Because our eyes are normally closed in daily life, itis necessary to consider our nature and identity, and moreover, life anddeath. We should pay especially close attention to the act of choosing.
If we are not careful, we might lose sight of ourselves and of the border
between life and death. It all depends on what has shaped ouridentities. In other words, our identities, which we have a habit ofreferring to as unique and provided to us beforehand, are actuallycontinually being shaped by our responses to various questions. It
follows that this also shapes our views of life and death. What we see in
The Key in the Hand is exactly the process in which children’s identities
are gradually formed by the words they use. The more true to life thequestion is, the more true to life the answer will be. Shiota’s questions
seem true to the children, which explains why the keys drive them tomake a choice, and why they also seem like questions to us. But if theperson faced with the choice does not consider the question carefully,
they will merely be pushed forward by the authority of the key they holdand receive an empty opportunity to enter the space without the ability
to judge the true value of the choice they have been given. The words
we are asked to judge are not the sweet expressions of children. They
are the words they desperately need to steer and navigate an unfamiliar
boat through the bright red storm as the vessels of primal memory
move forward.
Do you realize that in The Key in the Hand, you are being asked how
children come to be entrusted with a key, what questions the key
poses, and why we are asked such things? It is essential that we
actively question, pursue the process in detail, and put it into words.
To us, the real key is not the bright and enjoyable things the children
say in their halting way but what they lead to. Instead of the seemingly
gentle scenes of parents entrusting keys to children, we should pay
close attention to the way the children firmly grasp them in their hands.