Step off the ferry at Teshima’s Ieura port, 25 minutes from the nearest mainland city of Tamano, Okayama Prefecture, and life goes quiet. The odd car passes by; occasionally, a town bus. On the far side of the island, tucked away in a dilapidated house southeast of the port and southwest of the island’s titular art museum, Chiharu Shiota’s “Memory of Lines” waits for visitors.
The installation opened this spring on Teshima as part of the Setouchi Triennale, and will reopen Aug. 1 for the summer edition. Remote and hard to access, even by the standards of the lesser known far-flung art island in the Seto Inland Sea, the work risks being seen only by scant numbers of people.
That doesn’t bother the acclaimed Osaka-born, Berlin-based artist Shiota, whose highly photogenic signature red-string sculptures have become globally recognizable.
