NOBUHO NAGASAWA
TRANSFORMATION AND RESILIENCE
506 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY
JUNE 2020
Westwood Gallery artist Nobuho Nagasawa participated in the artist movement painting artwork on storefront plywood boards in SoHo in June 2020. At 506 Broadway, Nagasawa painted a large mural of 109 white stenciled cicadas against a black background. The powerful image represented the 17 year life cycle of cicadas emerging from the earth in the summer of 2020, entitled Transformation and Resilience.
The number 109 derived from the one hundred and eight times a gong is struck at midnight through Buddhist temples in Japan during New Year’s Eve. Each ring of the gong represents 108 temptations a person must overcome to attain a better life. By painting one extra cicada in SoHo, the number 109 is an indication for the opportunity to move forward.
Nobuho Nagasawa
Transformation and Resilience, June 2020
paint on storefront plywood at 506 Broadway
Photo by Jake Price
At Stony Brook University, where Nagasawa is a professor, Transformation and Resilience was included in their online exhibition ‘Reckoning’, an exhibit of faculty artwork to express the collective experience of the pandemic, quarantine, xenophobia, racial injustice, political activism and more.
Nobuho Nagasawa painting Transformation and Resilience at 506 Broadway, June 2020. Photos by Jake Price.