Chiharu Shiota, Accumulation – Searching for the Destination, 2014/2021. Vintage suitcases, motors, and ropes. Installation view, Shiota Chiharu: The Soul Trembles, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, 2021. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Guan-Ming Lin. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Join Ruth Erickson, ICA Barbara Lee Chief Curator, for an overview of Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home at the ICA Watershed. In this drop-in program, Erickson will unpack how the artist uses thread to tell stories of travel, consciousness, and home.
Live Spanish translation will be offered at this event.
Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs Ruth Erickson has been a driving force in the ICA’s curatorial department since joining the museum in 2014. Among her many projects, she has organized major thematic group exhibitions, including the critically acclaimed To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood (2022), A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now (2022), and When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art (2019); a significant artist survey and publication Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist (2017); and solo presentations of María Berrío (2023), Barbara Kruger (2022), Vivian Suter (2019), Wangechi Mutu (2018), and Kevin Beasley (2018), among others. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the 2015 exhibition and publication Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–57 (for which she was co-editor and served as research fellow), Ruth Asawa: All is Possible (2021), Kevin Beasley (2018), Sue Williams (2015), and Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology (2014). Before joining the ICA, Erickson was a fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia (2008–10) and served as curator at Burlington City Arts (BCA) (2004–7). She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania, and her B.A. from Carleton College, Northfield, MN. Erickson is the recipient of a prestigious Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship in 2021.
Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Brianne Chapelle, Curatorial Department Coordinator.
The exhibition is supported by the Japan Foundation, the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor and featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025.
