Born in 1937 in Niigata, Japan, in 1964 Kubota moved to New York, immediately entering the downtown art scene at the invitation of artist George Maciunas, the Founder of Fluxus Art Movement. She lived and worked in SoHo, New York City until she died in 2015.    

An active participant in the international Fluxus art movement in the 1960s, Kubota was strongly influenced by the art and theories of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage.

Focusing on several, often interconnected themes, her wide ranging art works include:

Video Sculptures that pay direct homage to Duchampian ideas and icons (Meta-Marcel and Duchampiana series, including the work Nude Descending a Staircase, 1976);

And Video Displays and Installations that reference Japanese spiritual traditions of nature and landscape, particularly water and mountains (River, 1981, Niagara Falls, 1985);

Her work also includes an ongoing, deeply personal narrative group of pieces called Video Diary, presenting subjective documentary style chronicling of her personal life on video (Broken Diary, 1970-present).

Shigeko Kubota brought a singular sensibility to her extensive body of video sculptures, multi-media installations, and single-channel videos. Throughout her career, Kubota forged a lyrical union of the personal and the technological, often merging vibrant electronic processing techniques with images and objects of nature, art and everyday life.

Kubota merges her signature electronic processing with art historical and cultural references and a strong sense of female identity. The later installments of her video diary often focused on her relationship with her late husband, artist Nam June Paik.