Using a high accuracy 3-D printer, Inomata created a series of crystalline shells that put the skylines of New York, Thailand, and Greece on the backs of the ocean’s most famous homebodies.

Inomata’s walking sculptures feel like something you’d see in a dream or a Hayao Miyazaki movie, but were actually inspired by a mundane real-estate transaction. The governments of France and Japan had been negotiating over rights to an embassy and came to a compromise where control would change hands every 50 years. This got Inomata thinking about ownership, nationality, and migration in an increasingly globalized world and spurred her to capture the ideas as an artwork, with the hermit crab acting as her muse.