Chieko Murasugi is a painter and textile artist who was born in Tokyo, raised in Toronto, and lived in San Francisco for 20 years before moving to the North Carolina Triangle in 2012. She has exhibited her work nationally in galleries and museums including the Weatherspoon, Mint, CAM Raleigh, and Ackland Museums. Her paintings reside in collections of Duke University, and the Cities of Raleigh and Durham. From 2019-2025 she co-founded and co-curated BASEMENT, an artist collective promoting works by experimental artists with roots in the Southeast. She has been awarded artist residencies at Hambidge, Black Mountain College (digital), and Wildacres. She holds degrees in Visual Perception (Experimental Psychology, Ph.D. York U) and Studio Art (MFA UNC-Chapel Hill).
Born in Tokyo and now based in North Carolina, I make work across painting, textile, and mixed media where material and process carry history, and where chance and intention are held in precarious balance.
My work draws on both personal biography and American history, filtered through a transpacific lens. These histories enter my practice through materially charged references such as cheesecloth used to wrap napalm in WWII firebombs, nori (seaweed), childhood diary pages, and paper silhouettes of samurai weapons and armor. The kimono form is a site where American and Japanese histories converge.
In my recent paintings, chance is introduced through digital randomization within a fixed compositional structure. Randomness reveals itself as clusters form, gaps appear, and both subtle and pronounced imbalances emerge.
My practice illuminates the uneven and unpredictable nature of chance, and its outcomes.