A t the beginning of this month, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota's retrospective "Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles" held at the Shanghai Long Museum came to a close. The exhibition toured from Tokyo, Japan, to China and is the most extensive retrospective of Shiota's twenty-five years of artistic career to date. Shiota received the invitation to hold this exhibition in 2017, the same year she was diagnosed with cancer again after twelve years. Given the context of Shiota's battle with cancer, her oeuvre focusing on exploring life and death, memory and cognition are further enhanced and manifested within the retrospective. Among the many exhibits in this retrospective is one of Shiota's celebrated dress installations, Reflection of Space and Time, in which two white dresses are suspended within a frame of black threads. This work is likened to an enlarged version of the present work, State of Being (Children's Dress), as if unfolding the growth of a girl to womanhood, therefore outgrowing the children's dress. No longer used, discarded, or forgotten, the dress is kept away in a wardrobe of lost memory constructed with interweaving white threads. White threads are considerably rarer in Shiota's series of thread sculptures and installations, thus emphasising the artist's strong emotions towards the passing of time, the memories and traces of the use embodied within this work.

Shiota first incorporated threads as a medium in 1999 in her work Dialogue from DNA, whereby 450 shoes collected were connected with red threads pulled up towards a focal point suspended under a house structure built with iron frames and black threads. The artist reenacted the piece in the 2008 exhibition held at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, adjusting it so that the stories behind each shoe were also on display. Since then, collecting everyday objects from the public forms a crucial part of Shiota's modus operandi, surrounding them in threads and transforming them into her intricate sculptural and installations works.

According to Shiota, the tangling and interlocked threads embody the complexity of human emotions and delicate relationships, occasionally tense and vulnerable. Black and red threads are more often seen in Shiota's thread series, rendering the use of white relatively rare. "White represents eternity," the artist explains. "I think time is beyond a linear concept, a constant reincarnation." Dress is also a recurring motif of paramount importance to the artist's creative narrative. It was her Memory of Skin, an installation of suspending twenty-two mud-stained dresses, featured at the Yokohama Triennale in 2001 that gained Shiota international spotlight. Shiota believes that clothes are like a human's second skin. Even if the body perishes, the clothes remain and can embody both the inner and outer aspects of a person beyond their physical existence. Perhaps State of Being (Children's Dress) does not intend to convey the memory or delineate the silhouettes of its original user but acts as an independent decontextualised symbol intervening the viewer's memory, drawing out that piece of clothing deeply imbedded within that was once loved and adored.

想必觀者對本作的創作者，日本藝術家鹽田千春並不陌生。就在本月初，藝術家在上海龍美術館舉行的「鹽田千春：靈魂的顫抖」完美落幕。該展覽從日本東京巡迴至中國，是鹽田二十五年創作生涯迄今最大規模的回顧展。在2017年接獲邀請舉辦此展覽時，鹽田同時得悉自己癌症復發的噩耗，因此，其創作本身已在探討的人的生死、興衰、記憶及認知，透過這展覽的主題以及其自身狀態更得以彰顯。該展覽云云的參展品中，不乏鹽田最為人熟知的裙子裝置藝術，當中包括了以黑線包裹兩件白色洋裝的《時空的反射》。該作品猶如《生存的狀態（童裝裙）》的加大版，彷彿訴說著一個女孩的成長和在過程中因為尺寸變小而不再使用、或被丟棄、或被遺忘的童裝裙子，從而被塵封在一個以白線交織的記憶衣櫥裡。而本作所使用的白線，屬鹽田的紗線作品中較為罕見的用色，道盡了藝術家透過本作對逝去的時間、使用者的痕跡和回憶的濃烈情緒。

鹽田於1999年創作的作品《與DNA對話》裡首次使用紗線作為主要製作元素。當時，她把450隻蒐集回來的鞋子以紅線拴住並連接到同一個交合點，懸浮在一個以黑線和鐵架搭構的屋子下。在2008年打扮國家美術館舉辦的展覽中，鹽田千春重新演繹的作品《陸地之上》在展示鞋子的同時也把鞋子背後的故事一併呈現。自此，從社會徵集日常物品成為鹽田藝術創作的重要一環，及後再把這些物品用毛線重重包裹，纏繞成細膩精緻的雕塑及裝置藝術。

對鹽田而言，紗線的糾結穿插展現了人與人之間的關係，環環相扣，時而繃緊，或會斷裂，纖細的材質不言而喻地道出了人類的複雜且多面的情感。在鹽田的作品中，以黑色及紅色的線居多，而像本作所用的白色極為罕見。根據藝術家解釋：「白色的線代表著永恆。【……】我認為時間並非一個線性概念，而是輪迴的。」而裙子對藝術家的創作理念也非常重大。在2001年橫濱三年展中讓鹽田在國際藝壇嶄露頭角的作品《皮膚的記憶》（Memory of Skin），便使用了22件經泥水浸泡的連身裙垂吊而成的裝置藝術。鹽田認為衣服好比人的第二層皮膚，即便身死，衣服仍在，是比人的存在更富表達人的內外的潛力。也許《生存的狀態（童裝裙）》並不是要傳遞其的使用者蘊藏的記憶剪影，而是即使個別的身體不再存在，童裝裙依然能作為一個獨立的符號介入觀者回憶，抽出那深埋腦海裡、曾經非常喜愛或難以忘懷的衣裳。