In 2014, following the success of her first project in Jingdezhen – “Blue & White – Made in China”, Martha Rieger created a second group of sculptures, under the title “Columbus’ Egg” – an homage to a legendary story connecting the travels and discoveries of Christopher Columbus with the humoristic and apparently simple challenge of balancing an egg on its one end. The myth, which demonstrates the value of creative thinking, intersects with the geographical, material and emotional journeys which are at the heart of Rieger’s work.
The egg sculptures in this body of work are characterized mostly by vegetation patterns, hand-painted on all sides of the egg sculptures, creating an artificial landscape that merges the “natural” – eggs and greenery – and the artificial – the work of art.

Both motifs of the egg and the garden are loaded with autobiographical aspects of memory and sub consciousness, fantasy and reality. Rieger creates an underlying trail between her life in Brazil and Israel and the porcelain’s journey from East to West; beginning with her mother’s plant nursery in Rio de Janeiro and the city’s decorated pavements, continuing with the traditional models of the Far East and ending with local motifs of the Middle East – palm trees and watermelon fields, mesmerizing by their initial beauty, but gradually seem to be more like warheads or bombshells.

This project was exhibited in Inga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, Fresh Paint Art Fair 2016, Tel Aviv and in ״Post Post-modernism ≠ Utopia”, Haifa Museum of Art, 2016, Haifa.