Nobuho Nagasawa

Another example exhibited:
United Arab Emirates, The 6th Sharjah Biennial, 2003

Grady Turner, "Report from the U. A. E. Fast Forward on the Persian Gulf," Art in America, Autumn 2003, No. 33
Grady Turner, "Regime Change Takes Effect At a Persian Gulf Biennial," The New York Times, May 4, 2003, illustrated

Nagasawa's cast "eggs" were created in the artist's studio near Ground Zero after 9/11 and relate to a body of work exhibited at the 6th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates.  This site specific installation entitled her render was completed at a moment of global conflict shortly after the war in Iraq began.  The installation consisted of "eggs" cast in the dry, life-essential mineral of salt and a film projection of running water.  Rock salt mixed with sodium silicate was wrapped in women's nylon stockings as a 'protective skin' and then cast in plaster moulds, the quantity of salt in each egg being roughly equivalent to what is required for a year of human life. 

Viewed as a group, these brain-sized objects look alike, but their unique identities emerge when examined one-by-one.  Removed from the nylon sheath after drying, 100 eggs were designated male.  An additional hundred remaining wrapped in the nylon were considered female.  Collaboration was important to the artist's conception of the work, and some of the eggs bear inscriptions by young Muslim women, art students of Sharjah University, who expressed their private thoughts by writing them directly in Arabic on the female eggs.