Chiharu Shiota invites you to participate in her impactful exhibition, Home Less Home, by sharing stories and images of what home means, what it feels like to leave home, and what it takes to rebuild it. These contributions could be letters, excerpts from diaries, text threads, family photos, visas, passports, immigration papers, drawings, or documents that depict home, family, or places to which you long to return. Submissions will be integrated into the artist’s installation Home Less Home, on view at the ICA Watershed in East Boston beginning May 22, 2025.
Shiota’s immersive work delves into the concept of home: how it’s formed, the things we accumulate within it, and how these objects shape our sense of belonging. By contributing, you’ll help create a collective narrative that transforms the museum space into a poignant reflection of shared memories and experiences, offering a unique representation of our common humanity.
Join Chiharu Shiota and ICA/Boston in this deeply personal and communal journey as we explore the things that make a home—and what it truly means to feel at home.
About the Artist
Chiharu Shiota (born 1972, Osaka, Japan) is a Berlin-based Japanese artist who has been working at the intersection of performance, sculpture, and large-scale installation since the 1990s. Shiota is internationally renowned for her large-scale installations, which she has exhibited globally, with recent solo presentations at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2024); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2024); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2022); ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (2021); Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); and Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019). Her work has also been included in numerous group shows and international exhibitions, including the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2015) where Shiota represented Japan with her installation The Key in the Hand.
About the Exhibition
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens the 2025 Watershed season with Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home, on view May 22 through Sep 1, 2025. The exhibition features two large-scale installations by the Berlin-based, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (born 1972 in Osaka, Japan), including the debut of a new commission made for the ICA Watershed. Shiota foregrounds universal stories of migration, home, connection, memory, and survival. Her signature approach combines intricate, immense, and web-like installations built of thread and rope with quotidian objects—such as shoes, suitcases, beds, chairs, dresses, and keys—that serve as symbols for human presence and memory. Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home amplifies the ICA Watershed as a unique space for public art in Boston and will be included as part of the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial. The exhibition is the artist’s first solo presentation in New England and is organized by Ruth Erickson, the ICA’s Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Brianne Chapelle, Curatorial Department Coordinator.
