Based in New York City since 2001, Nobuho Nagasawa was born in Tokyo, and raised in Europe and Japan, and received her MFA at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. She came to the United States as a visiting scholar through the invitation of California Institute of the Arts in 1986, where she studied visual art, critical theory and music. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose site-specific work explores the places, politics, ecology and psychological dimensions of space and people. Her work involves in-depth research into the cultural history and memory, and extensive community participation.
Nagasawa’s exhibition history includes: the Royal Garden of the Prague Castle in the Czech Republic, Ludwig Museums in Germany and Hungary, Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities in the United States, Alexandria Library in Egypt, as well as exhibitions in Denmark, Italy, United States, and Japan. She has been a representative of international venues: Asian Art Biennial (Bangladesh, 2002), International Art Biennial (Egypt, 2002, 2004, 2005), Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2003), Echigo-Tsumari Triennial (Japan, 2003) and Sinop Biennial (Turkey, 2006). She has received numerous grants including: DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), Berlin State Grant, Rockefeller Grant, California Arts Council Fellowships Award, Brody Arts Fund, and several Japan Foundation Grants, among others. Nagasawa has been reviewed in newspapers and periodicals including: The Los Angeles Times,San Francisco Chronicle, Artweek, Art in America, Art Asia Pacific, Sculpture magazine, and in The New York Times by Holland Cotter.
In the field of public art, Nagasawa has been commissioned for more than 20 public art projects in California, Washington, Texas, New York, Berlin and Japan. She received a Design Excellence Award for Architecture and Public Art in 1997 through the Office of Cultural Affairs in Los Angeles. In 2000, she designed 42,000-square-foot plaza for the Urban Government Center, commissioned by the Ministry of Construction of the Metropolitan Government in Japan. Her project for the Austin City Hall and Public Plaza with architect Antoine Predock was featured as one of the best projects nationwide in the Public Art Review section of the Art in America Annual 2004-200:, Sourcebook to the U.S. Art World.
Since 2004, Nagasawa has been working on a Greenway project along the waterfront bike path on Columbia Street in New York. This project received Art Commission Awards for Excellence in Design by the City of New York Board of Cultural Affairs Commissioners, presented by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. In 2009, Nagasawa’s San Francisco project received Design Excellence Award from the American Public Works Association. In summer, she is invited to participate in “Art and Nature Walk SurViving /AboutLive” project, organized by Foundation Nature Art Drenthe in the Netherlands.