Born in 1972, Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese installation artist. She has been living and working in Berlin since 1996.

Shiota initially studied painting at Seika University, Kyoto. During this time, she undertook an exchange residency at Canberra School of Art, Australia. It was here that she began to explore the boundaries of painting, staging her first performance Becoming Painting (1994) in which she used her body as a canvas. She moved to Germany in 1996 and continued her studies, firstly in Braunschweig and later Berlin, where she continues to live today. Her installations began receiving international attention in 2000, primarily through the group exhibition Continental Shift at the Ludwig Forum, Aachen and also the 2001 Yokohama Triennale. Today her work receives critical acclaim internationally and she is the recipient of numerous notable prizes including the Philip Morris Art Awards and the Audience Choice Award at The First Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Her achievements also include set design for several major theatrical and operatic productions including Daniel Karasek's Tristan and Isolde at Theater Kiel, Germany. Chiharu Shiota’s museum exhibitions include Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf, K21, Düsseldorf, DE (2015), Freer and Sackler Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., US (2014); The Museum of Art, Kōchi, JP (2013); La Maison Rouge, Paris, FR (2011); National Museum of Art, Osaka, JP (2008); and MoMA PS1, New York, US (2003) to mention a few. She has participated in the Venice Biennale, 2015; Aichi Triennale, 2010; Gwangju Biennale, 2006 and Yokohama Triennale 2001, amongst others.

Her works are included in The Leopold Private Collection, Vienna; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; The Hoffmann Collection, Berlin and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.