Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota and Mori Art Museum director Mami Kataoka have been appointed to Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters) by the government of France. Shiota received the degree of Officier, and Kataoka the rank of Chevalier, at a joint decoration ceremony officiated by Béatrice Le Fraper du Hellen, ambassador of France to Japan, on September 8 at the ambassador’s official residence in Tokyo.

Born in Osaka in 1972 and currently based in Berlin, Shiota explores concepts of life, death, and human connection through large-scale installation, performance, photography, video, and sculpture. In particular, she is renowned for her interpretations of memory and consciousness, collecting ordinary ephemera—shoes, keys, chairs, and dresses—and entangling them in massive web-like structures woven from vermillion thread. Shiota has exhibited worldwide and represented Japan at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. She won the 61st Mainichi Art Award in 2020 and the Japan Foundation Award in 2024. “The Soul Trembles” (2019), her largest solo exhibition to date, was curated by fellow Order recipient Kataoka at the Mori Art Museum and has since toured internationally to eight cities, including the Grand Palais in Paris.

Kataoka joined the Mori Art Museum in 2003 and has served as director since 2020. From 2023 to early 2026, she was director of the National Center for Art Research at Japan’s National Museum of Art, where she initiated a pilot curator exchange program in collaboration with Paris’s Centre Pompidou. She co-directed the ninth Gwangju Biennale in 2012, directed the 21st Biennale of Sydney in 2018, and will co-curate the 2027 Helsinki Biennial. Kataoka will head the upcoming 2026 Roppongi Art Night in Tokyo, scheduled to open in October, with a Focus program highlighting French contemporary art.

Established in 1957 by the French Ministry of Culture, the Order of Arts and Letters acknowledges individuals who have made significant contributions in arts and literature in France and around the world.

Harison Butler is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.