Shoes

Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese contemporary artist.  It is difficult to find much on her except she was born in Osaka and now lives in Berlin.  She attended schools in Japan, the United States, Germany, and Australia.  Her works are original and interesting, and perhaps, full of social commentary more than artistic spirit.  Below is an exhibit that was on display at the Freer/Sackler museum which I seem to be writing about endlessly these days.  It is an exhibit of 300 discarded and found(donated) shoes (not pairs) and donated notes about each shoe tied to a piece of red yarn that goes back to that point in the corner.  The artist has collected these over the years because they are reflective of the bits and pieces of our lives that we leave behind.  I could not read the notes while I was there since most were in Japanese. I later found this link that tells the story of many of these notes.

In this photo above I included the guard who was there, I am sure, to keep small children and evil adults from playing with the display.  (I wonder if some days his feet hurt?)  You can find some interesting information on the installation here.

Shoes are often symbols of our travels across this earth via our life.  I have not had enough courage to visit the Holocaust Museum, but they have a room full of shoes that once belonged to living human Jews with precious and important lives.

Shoes represent who we are and what we think of ourselves sometimes.  Symbols of our essence maybe?  Sometimes given more importance than they deserve.  I recently posted about shoes on this blog.