Bios

Nobuho Nagasawa is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects include sculptural installation, architectural intervention, time-based work, activism, and public art. Her series of interactive light and sound woven optical fiber projects are shaped by the intersection of art, science, and technology, and her interest in acoustic ecology, a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between living beings and their environment. Her interest in synaesthesia – a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway – has manifested in creating a series of sartorial art works that expose and interact with the internal physiology of a musician’s body. Her luminescent woven optical fiber attire, “Bio Lux,” responds to the live bio-data of the musician’s body movements, heartbeat, and breath, sparking the optical fiber into changing colors. Nagasawa has exhibited extensively around the world including at  the Royal Garden of the Prague Castle (Czech Republic), Ludwig Museums (Germany, Hungary), Rufino Tamayo Museum (Mexico), Alexandria Library (Egypt), and the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities (US). She has also been a representative in international venues: Asian Art Biennial (Bangladesh, 2002), International Book Art Exhibitions (Egypt, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2016), Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2003), Echigo-Tsumari Triennial (Japan, 2003), Sinop Biennial (Turkey, 2006), Fukushima Biennial (2012, 2014) and Setouchi Triennial (2013, 2016). Among her many honors, Nagasawa has been the recipient of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), Berlin State Grant, Rockefeller Grant, California Arts Council Fellowships Award, Brody Arts Fund, and several Japan Foundation Grants. In New York, she was a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation’s Space Program, Established Artist Fellowship, and a Chancellors Award for Excellence in Research and Creativity from the State University of New York. She presented a TED Talk in 2013. Nagasawa has completed more than thirty public art projects internationally, including successful interdisciplinary collaborations with architects and engineers. They are civic projects such as city halls, government plazas, research laboratories, libraries, greenways, and transportation infrastructures. She received several Design Excellence Awards for Architecture and Public Art (Los Angeles, 1997; New York, 2006; San Francisco, 2008 and 2009.) Her Austin City Hall and Public Plaza project with architect Antoine Predock was featured as one of the best projects nationwide in the Public Art Review in 2005. The Public Design Commission announced the winners of this year’s Annual Awards for Excellence in Design in May; Nagasawa has received her second Excellence in Design Award from the City of New York. She is a professor at Stony Brook University, a Graduate Director for the MFA Program, and affiliate faculty of the Theatre Department. For more information, check out http://art.stonybrook.edu/nagasawa/ and http://Tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Water-weaving-light-interactive