After over two millennia of guarding Emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb, the Chinese terracotta warriors have been recast and underwent 'sex change' after a Paris-born artist created what she called the 'Terracotta Daughters.'

Prune Nourry, an artist based in New York City, created 116 female terracotta warriors which will be exhibited on September 10 to October 4 at the China Institute in the city.

Like Us on Facebook

These female sculpted warriors have a different purpose from the male ones.

"I needed a strong cultural symbol to base this project on, and a universal one that would speak both to Chinese villagers in the countryside and to citizens abroad," Nourry told CNN citing that her female terracotta warriors were made to highlight the imbalance brought about by gender preference in China.

Beginning with her eight original statues, she had been working on the female counterpart of the famous Chinese relics for over two years together with local craftsmen in Xi'an who helped create the remaining 108 by combining the heads, torsos and legs from the first 'Terracotta Daughters.'

Each terracotta female statue stands at almost five feet tall and weighs around 260 pounds, and portrays a contemporary hair style and outfit as they are fashioned after eight orphan girls wearing school uniform.

Nourry also considered the number of female clay soldiers because of its auspiciousness to the Chinese culture and had made the statues look 'approachable, friendly and even charming,' CNN reported.

To be keep the 'balance' among genders, the 'Terracotta Daughters' will also be treated as an archeological project and will be buried in China until 2030, a year Chinese experts see men to have the most difficult time finding a wife due to gender disproportion.

The imbalance have become a huge problem for the country for several years now as statistics show that in 2010, there are 34 million men more than women. This issue rooted from China's long-standing one-child policy and traditional desire for a male offspring.

TagsTerracotta Army, Terracotta Daughters, gender imbalance, artist, sex change