Xin Liu's High Line Performance, "NOAA: A Fall Towards Home"
About this Event
For the High Line, Xin Liu presents NOAA: A Fall Towards Home, commissioned by High Line Art and co-produced with Onassis ONX. Building on recurring motifs in her practice, the work takes the audience through the life cycle of one National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite. Reimagined as a sentient being, the satellite comes to life via intimate diary-like entries, narrating its journey as a permanent celestial migrant. Its real-world counterpart—NOAA-15—was launched in 1998 and became part of a long-term mission of mapping global climate change. In Liu’s work, performers embody the machine’s journey from launch to degradation and eventual retirement. Behind them, LED screens display original text and video told from the satellite’s perspective, alongside fragments from the history of orbital photography, tracing the evolving gaze through which Earth first came to see itself from above.
NOAA: A Fall Towards Home explores the depth of despair and hope inherent in exile and disconnection. While outer space is often imagined as an escape or the new frontier, this satellite grapples with profoundly human concerns: Where is home? Who am I? Where do I belong? By transforming this overlooked, Earth-born machine into a character, Liu invites us to empathize and reconsider our own ideas of duty, estrangement, and connection.
On June 16, 2025, NOAA officially ceased data delivery from NOAA-15 and its model series. This decision comes at a precarious moment for environmental science and research. In recent months, the current administration has proposed eliminating entirely the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and the next generation of satellite programs have seen their contracts cancelled. Ultimately, NOAA: A Fall Towards Home invites us to see ourselves more clearly, and serves as a soulful reminder: Earth is what allows us to be human.
About the artist
Xin Liu fuses art and science in her sculptures, installations, videos, virtual-reality experiences, and publications. As an engineer and researcher, she has led and successfully launched two payloads to the International Space Station and one suborbital payload onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard system, and has flown three parabolic research flights. Through her artistic practice, Liu considers the personal implications of our technological advancements, constructing narratives that provide space to imagine ourselves in a world of rapidly expanding possibilities.
Xin Liu (b. 1991, Xinjiang) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Institutional solo exhibitions include Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2026); Hyundai ArtLab (2025); Pioneer Works, New York, New York (2023); Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao, China (2023); M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2021); and Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York (2020). She is the recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award (2025), K11 Artist Prize (2024), Porsche Chinese Young Artist of the Year (2021), and the X Museum Triennial Award (2020). Liu currently presents in the Uzbekistan National Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Xin Liu is an Onassis ONX Member.
About Onassis ONX
Xin Liu’s ‘NOAA: A fall towards home’ was co-produced by Onassis ONX, the Onassis Foundation’s global platform for art and advanced technologies. As a catalyst for digital cultures, Onassis ONX empowers creatives who build transformative works, elevating their practice across ideation, development, presentation, and distribution through studios in Athens and New York. Such a holistic engagement throughout an artistic process enables world building at the frontiers of AI, immersive, spatial computing, gaming, and other emergent time-based media. Onassis ONX then cultivates and engages with a network of institutions and industries ready to respond to these new forms of creative expression and meaningfully engage with audiences around the world.
Photo Consent:
By attending this event, you agree that photos and/or video footage of you may be taken, and you grant your permission to Friends of the High Line and its agents/licensees to use such photos/footage for promotional and other purposes.
Accessibility:
We encourage all persons with disabilities to attend. To request additional information regarding accessibility or accommodations at a program, please contact [email protected]. Program venues are accessible via wheelchair, and ASL interpretation can be arranged two weeks in advance. If you require registration information for this event in Spanish or Simplified Chinese, contact us at [email protected].
What happens if it rains?
In the case of inclement weather, the event will be moved to the rain date of June 26. We will add a note to the website by noon on the day of the original event and email all registered participants.
Support
Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston and Charina Endowment Fund.
Major support of High Line Art’s digital infrastructure is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Program support for High Line Art is provided by Sarah Arison, Suzanne Deal Booth, Charlotte Ford, Molly Gochman, and Joyce F. Menschel. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund and Shane Akeroyd.
High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Julie Menin.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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