Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at the Hayward Gallery

Explore the Transformative Power of Chiharu Shiota’s Threads of Life at London’s Hayward Gallery, A Must‑See Cultural Highlight for 2026

When London looks for moments of quiet intensity, raw beauty and emotional resonance, it turns to the Hayward Gallery. And from 17 February to 3 May 2026, one of the world’s most poetic installation artists takes over its iconic brutalist top floor.
Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life is not just an exhibition, it’s an atmospheric plunge into memory, human connection, fragility and the invisible forces that bind us together.

The show marks Shiota’s first major solo exhibition in a London public institution, a milestone underscored by its scale, ambition and exquisitely woven emotional weight.

A Monumental Web of Memory and Human Connection

Berlin‑based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is renowned for her immersive thread installations; vast, intricate webs that envelop everyday objects such as keys, beds, dresses, shoes and chairs. These seemingly humble materials become anchors for universal themes: the body, memory, consciousness and the fragility of existence.

Across the Hayward’s top floor, Shiota’s threads stretch from floor to ceiling, wrapping themselves around the gallery’s angular concrete volumes in a choreography of tension, softness and spatial poetry. The architecture doesn’t merely host the work; it becomes part of it.
The result is a world you don’t just look at, but walk through, breathe in, and carry with you.

As Artprice notes, the exhibition transforms the gallery into “an immersive landscape of threads, everyday objects, and monumental sculptures exploring memory and the invisible bonds between people.”

A Journey Through Tangled Spaces

Visitors navigate through cocoon‑like chambers, stepping into density, shadow and openness as they move through worlds woven from red, black and white wool. These colours, symbolic in Japanese culture and deeply personal to Shiota, enhance the emotional charge of each installation.

Some spaces feel like sanctuaries; others like metaphysical puzzles.
Keys suspended in a red web evoke possibility and loss. Beds wrapped in black thread create a dreamscape where sleep merges with memory. Letters of thanks, written by the public, hang from delicate red lines; expressions of gratitude floating in a collective emotional archive.

This is art as experience: immersive, atmospheric and profoundly intimate.

Iconic Works Reimagined for London

Shiota revisits several of her most celebrated installations, re‑conceived for the Hayward’s distinctive architecture and the emotional tone of 2026.

• The Locked Room (2016) returns, enveloping furniture in dense webs as if suspending memories in time.

• During Sleep (2026) appears as a new iteration of earlier versions from 2002, activated with live performances on select dates (7 March, 11 April and 2 May). These performances, included with exhibition entry, extend Shiota’s bridging of body, movement and spatial drawing.

The exhibition also includes drawings, models, early performance videos and photographs that reveal the evolution of Shiota’s practice, from painterly frustrations to her breakthrough realisation of drawing in space.

A Celebration of the Southbank Centre’s 75th Anniversary

Threads of Life forms a key part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th‑anniversary celebrations and runs in parallel with Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart, with a single ticket offering access to both exhibitions—an exceptional cultural pairing for visitors.

For anyone planning things to do in London in early 2026, this dual exhibition forms one of the most compelling cultural moments of the year.

Why “Threads of Life” Matters, Now More Than Ever

Shiota’s work speaks to our shared humanity at a moment when connection feels both essential and elusive.
It visualises what we often feel but cannot articulate: the silent threads that tether us to each other, the fragility of memory, the rituals of living, the spaces between people.

Walking through the exhibition feels like stepping into a collective mind—where every object, knot and suspended relic becomes a reminder of how intertwined our lives truly are.

As AnOther Magazine describes, Shiota makes “visible the invisible connections that tether us to one another,” drawing from the Japanese Red String Theory and expanding it into a universal visual language.

Essential Visitor Information

Dates: 17 February – 3 May 2026
Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Tickets: £19 / Free for Members
Your ticket includes entry to Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart.

Opening Hours:
Tue–Fri: 10am–6pm
Sat: 10am–8pm
Sun: 10am–6pm
Closed Mondays

An Unmissable London Cultural Experience

If you’re looking for things to do in London in 2026, or if you simply want to be moved by an artist who transforms the intangible into something hauntingly physical, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life is essential viewing.

It is a rare opportunity to see an artist at the height of her powers, weaving together the emotional, the architectural and the deeply personal in a way that only Shiota can.

This exhibition is not just to be seen, it’s to be felt.

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