Nagasawa studied art, critical theory, and music in Berlin and California, spending time in Tokoname, Japan, where she studied under the ceramist Ryoji Koie, and eventually settling in New York. The artist sees ecology as inseparable from art. Her later works adapt LED technology and fiber-optic cables. In her 2013 TED Talk, Nagasawa said, “I combine the natural world—rain, wind, waves, and bird songs with human sounds, like heartbeat and voices, and I transform them into light.”
In 2023, her early earthworks Noyaki (1984) and Navel of the Earth (1985) were included in the Mori Art Museum’s 20th-anniversary exhibition, “Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living.” In a grainy video on view in the Mudam show, the artist is shown creating one of her earthworks with a group of Tokoname residents—laughing, shouting, and being herself. " (Yuki Sumner)
