Presented in the context of “Peace Sculpture 1995,” a commemorative exhibition that corresponded with Danish liberation day, this work was undertake in collaboration with Nobuho Nagasawa. The artists were challenged to produce an installation in one or more of the more than 5000 concrete Nazi bunkers on the west coast of Denmark built during Hitler's Atlantic Wall Fortification Project. Empty since, the immovable and massive concrete bunkers have been stubborn reminders of the war for over fifty years.
Locating our work in ThyborØn, a small fishing village of 3000 inhabitants, we transformed two of the bunkers into "love motels". Furnished with military cots, pillows and blankets, the bunkers were topped with signage modeled from motels nearby my Watts, California studio. The interiors of the bunkers were also strewn with piles of sugar (an image of sweetness and wartime scarcity). In a processional scheduled for the eve of Danish liberation day, the local inhabitants carried 500 large plaster cast eggs into the bunkers and placed them in piles throughout. The eggs had been cast over a period of weeks by elementary school students from molds the artists provided. The five hundred eggs, the approximate number of ova a woman releases over her lifetime, served as a symbol of regeneration and rebirth from the calamities and complexities of war.
| "About Face" | |||
|
|||