Nancy’s Hope

Nancy Soderberg with Gini Lawson
USA-Washington 2006

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

NANCY SODERBERG, FORMER SENIOR FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR TO CLINTON, FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS

My impression of Nancy is a study in contrasts: powerful authority figure/pretty, blonde hair, soft features. Woman, wife, stepmother/facing the horror of war on a daily basis.

But a singular vision: the world can change, war can be contained.

So, we have a soft, hand-stitched pillow – symbol of domesticity, a womanly art. In the colors of the UN flag, the ultimate multilateral institution, and round, like the diplomatic Round Table. A locked, but fragile glass box, its contents a weapon of powerful but intimate destruction: an M67 Fragmentation hand grenade. And the key tucked safely away in a pocket of the UN pillow.