In September 2017, Nakaya made a site-specific fog sculpture for the building, still under construction at the time, that would house the new National Museum, on invitation from amongst others Oslo Kunstforening, Dansens hus, and the Ultima Festival. The Ekeberg Sculpture Park was contacted the same year regarding the possibility of setting up a temporary fog sculpture, and Pathfinder was shown for the first time in the park in September 2017. It was soon decided that the sculpture would become a permanent installation.

The sculpture is everchanging. At times the fog becomes so thick that it swallows up anyone who ventures into it, leaving microscopic water droplets on clothes, leaves and skin. The viewer becomes a physical part of the artwork. You are inside the material, you can feel it on your body, and you experience it both visually and physically. There is a cyclical movement in the work. The fog goes on and off with short intervals, preserving the surrounding environment, while also producing an aesthetic experience of the surroundings that disappear only to be rediscovered, as the fog spreads and gradually disperses again. For Nakaya, this is a representation of the natural cycle of appearing, disappearing and reappearing. The atmospheric conditions that normally are invisible to the naked eye, become visible in the fog that billows through the woods. It is the wind itself, as Nakaya often points out, that is the chisel that shapes the sculpture.

It isn’t the fog as a material that is important to Nakaya, but rather the fog as a medium that gives us access to what nature can provide. The fog sculptures do not recreate nature; they enter in a dialogue with it. Nakaya’s interest in natural cycles and nature’s mechanisms stems from her father, Ukichiro Nakaya (1900–1962). Ukichiro was a famous Japanese physicist, researching the fields of glaciology, electrostatic emissions and snow crystals. He is known for being the first person to make artificial snowflakes.

Nakaya’s fog sculptures break with the traditional understanding we have of the medium of sculpture and are an exciting synthesis of art and technology. The fog is artificial in the sense that it is generated by technology, but natural in terms of the material, which consists simply of water droplets. Nakaya has a long-standing and continued collaboration with the physicist Tom Mee. He is known as “the fog spinner” and is the man behind the patented fog technology. Water is pumped at high pressure through microscopic apertures installed in needle valves. The valves divide the water jets into drops so small they remain hanging in the atmosphere.