In her awe-inspiring installations, Chiharu Shiota (born 1972 in Osaka, Japan; lives and works in Berlin) foregrounds stories of migration, home, connection, memory, and consciousness. Using line in the form of string, Shiota creates immersive installations that underscore human connection and experience. For the ICA Watershed, Shiota will present two signature, large-scale installations that consider the ways humans collect memories and form connections as they move and travel: a site-specific iteration of Accumulation – Searching for the Destination (2014/2025) and a newly commissioned installation, Home Less Home (2025).

In Accumulation – Searching for the Destination, dozens of vintage suitcases hang from red rope, occasionally shaking with the turbulence of anticipation. For Shiota, who brought only one suitcase with her when she moved from Japan to Berlin in 1996, the suitcase symbolizes the starting point of a new journey. Home Less Home features an enormous field of red and black ropes forming the shape of a house. Within this symbolic form, Shiota suspends paper documents—passports, letters, immigration papers, messages—and embeds beds, desks, chairs, and tables to underscore how people create their homes through communication, stories, and objects. Together, these transporting works will consider the journey towards one home and away from another.

Featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025, this exhibition, Chiharu Shiota’s first solo presentation in New England, amplifies the Watershed as a unique space for public art in Boston. In dialogue with the Triennial’s theme of Exchange, Shiota will invite East Boston residents and organizations to contribute objects and stories that will be integrated into her installations.