“O Nut, spread yourself over me, that I may be placed among the imperishable stars and never die.”
– An inscription in the Pyramid texts

Cosmic Womb is an installation inspired by the Egyptian goddess Nut, who swallows the sun in the evening and gives birth to it again every morning – an act of perpetual renewal. In ancient Egyptian cosmology, Nut was not the goddess of the sky; she was the celestial womb, a liminal entity bridging the earthly and the divine in an eternal cycle of death and rebirth. Her maternal body was not passive but actively engaged in the structuring of time and humanity.

The piece Cosmic Womb draws upon this rich cultural lineage of Egyptian cosmology, reinterpreting Nut’s cosmic maternity. At its heart is a bridge-like form echoing Nut’s arched posture, spanning the space between the terrestrial and the celestial. A fabric ceiling – plump, rounded, and adorned with stars – invokes the prehistoric Venuses, such as the Venus of Willendorf (c. 28,000-25,000 BCE), spanning the millennia of the discourse on the female body as a vessel of creation and transformation. Much like these early figurines, Cosmic Womb accentuates fecundity, abundance, and potency.

In a world where reproductive labour is often undervalued, it is an invitation to reimagine motherhood not as a passive state, but as the very architecture of existence, as well as a form of feminization of the public sphere, and finally, a piece of shadow in the sunny park.


Hoda Tawakol is an Egyptian-French artist living in Hamburg.

Location of the work on Google Maps