Based in London, Shiina is a Japanese artist whose work interrogates the boundary between suppressed internal reality and the social masks we wear. Her practice explores the ‘performance of strength’—a tension that finds a stark parallel in today’s over-curated visual culture.​​​​​​​ Relocating from Japan to London prompted her to find ways of articulating emotions beyond words, navigating the space between cultural dislocation and self-preservation.

She translates this psychological friction through a material dialogue centred on the gesture. Working with calligraphy brushes—a tool familiar since her childhood—allows the brush to act as a direct extension of the body, creating an immediate connection between internal affect and the surface. These irreversible gestures serve as visceral traces that stand in defiance of our polished, ‘undo-able’ digital reality.

By layering the vulnerability of washi paper against the synthetic control of acrylic, she visualises the struggle of the self persisting between internal states and externally constructed identities. Her work does not seek to represent specific emotions; instead, it functions as an accumulation of presence, where unarticulated experiences exist as visible, unresolved traces.