[1] Active as an artist between the early 1950s and 1961, Shiraga was known for creating highly tactile artworks by pasting and creasing sheets of torn Japanese paper.
Her paper works, paintings, and installations were featured in major Western exhibitions on Gutai art and two posthumous retrospectives.
[1] In 1952, She joined Zero Society (Zero-kai), an art collective founded by Kazuo and other artists including Murakami Saburō, Atsuko Tanaka, and Akira Kanayama.
[5][6] In July 1955, Shiraga created installation White Plank for the "Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun" mounted by Gutai and Ashiya City Artists Association (Ashiya-shi Bijutsu Kyōkai) at a park on the bank of Ashiya River, Hyogo, Japan [1][6] From 1955 to 1960, Shiraga actively contributed her works to Gutai's exhibitions and events.
She sculpted sheets of paper to make large panels of abstract high reliefs that protruded from walls.
[10] Another article by Shiraga, published in 1956, described her encounter with Bell (1956), an interactive acoustic installation by her Gutai colleague Atsuko Tanaka.
[11] Shiraga provided a detailed account of how Bell was experienced by its immediate audience and explicated her interpretation of the new relationship between art and viewers envisaged by the work.
[1] Shiraga stated that she intended to create "an enormous crack in the empty sky" to "express that vast power which lies beyond human comprehension".
In the early 1960s, Shiraga started to incorporate oil paints, glass shards, and pieces of wood in her washi paper works.
[12] The contrast between the soft, wrinkled paper and other hard materials highlighted the tactility of the canvases and created visual rhythm.