From the 1970s until 2015, video art pioneers Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015) and Nam June Paik (1932-2006) lived and worked in a loft in the SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Mercer Street space was a “fluxhouse”—a collaborative artistic space associated with the avant-garde Fluxus movement. It served as a creative laboratory for the couple’s groundbreaking experiments in video art, a contemporary art form that combines moving images, sound and, often, sculptural elements.

Following Kubota’s death in 2015, the loft became the headquarters for the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation (SKVAF), preserving their artistic legacy and the site where so much of Kubota’s and Paik’s art was created. “The life and the work and the art were inseparable. Your life was your art. You lived in the art,” says Norman Ballard, the executor of Kubota’s estate and founding executive director of SKVAF. “I would say 90 percent of that almost 5000 square feet was all about the art, filled with art, piles of art, workshops, things in progress, and editing rooms and electronic products.”

In January 2025, SKVAF was among 19 new sites added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios (HAHS) program, which celebrates the preserved homes and studios of artists who lived and worked throughout the United States. This inclusion marked several significant firsts for the program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025. It is the first HAHS affiliate site to represent Asian artists—Kubota was Japanese and Paik was Korean.

“By shining a light on this particular studio, we begin to be a touchstone to the vast amount of Asian American, South Pacific Islander contributions to this country’s national artistic narrative,” said Valerie Balint, director of the HAHS program.

SKVAF is also the first space in the HAHS network that is devoted to video art, which Balint sees as key to “understanding those artistic movements that so fundamentally inform and impact our lives today.” “We’re talking about two people at the vanguard of video production,” she said, “which is now part of our everyday lives, from the macro level to the personal level, with our ability to create our own videos and statements on our phones and release them to the world.”

Pioneers of Video Art

Shigeko Kubota was born in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, in 1937. After earning a degree in sculpture, she worked as an art teacher and became active in Japan’s experimental art scene. In 1963, she crossed paths with Nam June Paik during a show in Tokyo in which he performed with Yoko Ono and John Cage, who were part of the Fluxus movement—an international network of interdisciplinary artists who rejected traditional art forms and elitism in the art world in favor of experimentation and improvisation. A lack of attention for her work in Japan led Kubota to move to New York at the invitation of George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus movement, in 1964.

Paik had recently settled in New York when Kubota arrived. Born in Japan-occupied Korea in 1932, he had studied music and art in Tokyo and later in Germany, where he became involved with Cage and other prominent Fluxus figures. By the early 1960s, Paik had begun experimenting with television sets and magnetic tape as a performing artist, laying the groundwork for what would become video art.

Kubota and Paik lived and worked together in their SoHo loft for several years before marrying in 1977. By then, Paik had risen to the pinnacle of the art world. Often referred to as “the father of video art” for his groundbreaking integration of broadcasts, video feedback, and television monitors into artistic installations and performances. One of his most iconic works include TV Buddha (1974), which features a Buddha statue observing its own image, captured and relayed in real time through a closed-circuit television system. He also incorporated lasers into several notable pieces, many of them created in collaboration with Ballard—a well-known laser artist in his own right—over the course of more than 40 years, until Paik’s death in 2006. “It was always about experimentation, exploring, pushing further and further,” says Ballard.

Kubota, like Paik, was initially active as a performer. Her early work Vagina Painting (1965)—in which she painted using a brush strapped between her legs—was a bold feminist critique of the male-dominated abstract expressionist movement.

In the 1970s, fueled by the release of the portable Portapak video recording system in the late 1960s, Kubota transitioned into video and pioneered what she called “video sculpture,” which involved integrating monitors and moving images into physical forms. In her landmark Duchampiana series, she paid homage to her friend and fellow artist Marcel Duchamp using sculptural reinterpretations layered with video footage. Other notable works, such as her River and Niagara Falls installations, combined flowing water imagery with video monitors embedded in landscape-inspired sculptures. Kubota often infused her work with autobiographical content, particularly in later pieces mourning Paik’s death.

Kubota, who lost a battle with cancer in 2015, is recognized today as the “mother of video art,” though as is too often the case with female artists, she did not receive as much recognition for her work in her lifetime.

Ballard notes that both Paik and Kubota had always wanted to establish a foundation. “Shikego specifically said she wanted her artwork restored and made available to future generations,” said Ballard.

Reaching a Broader Audience

Central to the Fluxus movement were “fluxhouses” — buildings where artists lived and worked in community. Paik and Kubota hosted lively parties and gatherings in their loft, further cementing their role as central figures in New York’s avant-garde art scene. After Paik suffered a stroke in 1996 that paralyzed the left side of his body, it was also where Kubota cared for him. Today, visitors will find the space much as it was during their lifetimes, filled with art, equipment, and personal ephemera, including handwritten recipes and poetry.

For Ballard, the inclusion of Kubota and Paik’s space to the HAHS network is a welcome recognition not just for the individual artists, but for Fluxus as a whole. “Fluxus has been called a lot of things, but very few times I would imagine a national treasure,” he said. “I think that’s a really important part of it.”

Joining the HAHS network has also provided the foundation with an opportunity to attract a broader audience. Kubota and Paik’s Fluxhouse is open for private tours, and until recently, it mostly attracted scholars and academics. However, Ballard notes that in the three months since becoming a HAHS affiliate, the studio has welcomed larger and more diverse groups than it had in the first ten years of the foundation. He hopes this will continue, reaching an even wider audience, including families.