The Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, California, 2000
hourglass, sand, silk doll faces, lead, petridish, umbilical cord, gray hair, canoe, copper, steel, stone, soybeans, water, projection
In the Twentieth Century, whose electric dawn was ushered in by Thomas Edison, whose atomic noon blazed over Japan, and whose dusk is charted in genetic code, time seems to be marked less by celestial increments of days and years than by the rhythm of human invention. In Geography of Time, Nagasawa maps this era of technological progress onto her own life narrative, producing a landscape of private memory and public history. In the atrium, a hanging pendulum grazes a circular plate of sand, while a rusted hourglass containing the sand from Japan and the United States marks the entrance to the gallery. Two wall reliefs reference the tragedy of historical conflict. A red circle of Nagasawa’s thumbprints in the center of 500 silk Japanese masks becomes the flag of Japan. On the opposite wall, a repeated image of a mushroom cloud/brain, silk-screened on sheets of lead, forms the flag of the United States.
Between the flags lie two tables, which display corporeal specimens: Nagasawa’s own umbilical cord in a petri dish and a collection of her gray hair in a small medicinal jar. A passage from innocence to experience is here tied to the aging of Nagasawa’s own body. A steel rocking chair and an infant’s bed covered with a lead blanket are situated at the corner of the space. The lead blanket symbolizes protection from radiation. Soybeans are laid on the blanket. Soy is an important staple food in Japan that has higher protein content. In Japan, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, those who ate the traditional Japanese diet had a longer life span then those who consumed the American supplied food, such as white bread, butter and milk.A large hourglass rusted by rainfall contains sand from Japan and the United States. The sand is mixed as one turns the hourglass, reminding viewers that Nagasawa’s life, and every life is created through interaction with others across space and time.
On the other side of the gallery, an acid etched copper leaf is quietly displayed with a navigational compass set in stone. A canoe filled with water is placed in an adjoining room. A projector is placed inside an old suitcase, which rests on one of the seats of the canoe, and provoking a sense of journey. Images of protozoa and human cell growth projected onto the water become a mirror, reflecting signs of the origin of life. Periodically the movement of these microscopic organisms is interrupted by the images of the atomic explosions. With reference to both generative and destructive forces, Nagasawa reminds viewers that time may fold back upon itself, and that any voyage to the future may require an encounter with the past. The images are somber, but the implications are hopeful. All human innovations transform the shape of time; some may lead to death, others will lead to life.