Organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes
in collaboration with
A collective poster project where every participating artist nominates two more artists, as an allegory of a creative chain reaction. The project is a collection of urgent messages calling for universal nuclear disarmament.
In 2023, the nine global nuclear powers, The United States, China, Russia, France, UK, Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan are expanding their nuclear arsenals. We are entering a silent new arms race in which trillions of dollars are being spent. At this exact moment, there are open threats of thermonuclear war, as well as nuclear tests being carried out. The world is dangerously close to a nuclear disaster.
In opposition to this trend, the ICAN established a landmark global agreement to ban nuclear weapons, known officially as the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons in 2017. It entered into force in January 2021 and has been signed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations.
Nuclear weapons have always been immoral; they are now illegal in the 92 signatory countries.
We know the countries that have yet to sign the nuclear ban treaty — the ones with the power to kill us all — will be the last to join. In nations hijacked by their military-industrial complexes, we can’t expect change to come from the top. Unless we exert public pressure worldwide, we are likely to experience nuclear war in our lifetime.
The good news is: we have done this in the past. Art and activism pressured governments in the 60s, 70s and 80s to dramatically reduce nuclear arsenals. An example of this was the 1 million protestors that gathered in Central Park in 1982, at the peak of the anti-nuclear movement. In 2020 there were approximately 13,400 nuclear weapons worldwide, compared with 63,632 in 1985, the highpoint for the global nuclear weapon stockpile.
Artists Against The Bomb was first publicly introduced in Vienna at the MST1, the first Meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the closing project will be presented in November of 2023 at the Second Meeting of State Parties MST2 at the United Nations in New York City.
Organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes
in collaboration with ICAN
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is a collection of urgent messages calling for universal nuclear disarmament. This series of posters designed by international artists can be printed locally and exhibited anywhere in the world. Participating artists grant permission for these images to be used to spread awareness about the imminent threat of nuclear war and the urgent need to abolish all nuclear weapons. If the download button is available, you can do so and print these artworks anywhere you choose to add to the global call for nuclear disarmament.
In 2023, the nine global nuclear powers – the United States, China, Russia, France, UK, Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan – are expanding their nuclear arsenals. We are entering a silent new arms race on which trillions of dollars are being spent. At this exact moment, there are open threats of thermonuclear war, as well as nuclear tests being carried out. The world is dangerously close to a nuclear disaster.
In 2017 ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), winners of the 2017 Peace Nobel Prize, established a landmark global agreement to ban nuclear weapons, known officially as the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. It entered into force in January 2021 and has been signed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations.
Nuclear weapons have always been immoral; they are now illegal.
We know the countries that have yet to sign the nuclear ban treaty — the ones with the power to kill us all — will not be the first to join. In nations hijacked by their military-industrial complexes, we can’t expect change to come from the top. Unless we exert public pressure worldwide, we are likely to experience nuclear war in our lifetime.
The good news is we have done this in the past. Art and activism have pressured governments to dramatically reduce nuclear arsenals. An example of this was the 1 million protestors that gathered in Central Park in 1982, at the peak of the anti-nuclear movement. In 2020 there were approximately 13,400 nuclear weapons worldwide, compared with 63,632 in 1985, the high point for the global nuclear weapon stockpile.
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB invites artists from all over the world to participate, and each participating artist then nominates two other artists to take part in hopes of sparking a chain reaction. Part of the inspiration for this project comes from Gerald Holtom, the designer of the original logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He chose not to trademark his creation so that it could be freely shared in support of the campaign, and that logo is now what we know as the Peace Sign.
The poster series was first publicly introduced in Vienna at the MST1, first Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW. Afterward, it was presented at the Køs Museum in Copenhagen, on billboards across the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, at Festival Ceremonia in Mexico City, and a growing number of other venues. The closing project will be presented in November of 2023 at the MST2, at the Visitor Lobby inside the United Nations in New York City, and at a parallel exhibition at the Judd Foudantion to expand the project’s exposure.
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MAGDALENA
ABAKANOWICZ
In 1992, Magdalena Abakanowicz began the series Hand-like Trees (1992–2004) as a sculptural response to her unrealized Arboreal Architecture. A public petition requested Abaka-nowicz to be commissioned to produce a permanent work in Hiroshima, Japan, as a memorial to the victims of nuclear destruction. She proposed a hand-like tower, poised as if to catch the bomb in the exact place where it exploded, 640 meters above sea level. This project was never carried out due to worries it might offend the sensibilities of hibakushas — surviving victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was worry that it might be perceived as too aggressive. In response, Abakanowicz created Space of Becalmed Beings (1993), a monument of 40 silent, seated bronze backs. They form a permanent installation on the terrace of the Contemporary Art Museum of the City of Hiroshima.
Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017) was a Polish sculptor and creator of fiber art. She often worked around sculpture, installation and textile. A sense of fluidity and possibility manifests itself in Abakanowicz's works as they shift from rigid and rectangular to more organic shapes. Curved sculptures sliced open like carcasses accompany objects that remind us of the artist’s lifelong obsession with the natural world.
THOMAS
HIRSCHHORN
In the hypercomplex world of today, with its unresolved history, we must remember and insist on the simplest, most primitive, most human law: ‘You should not kill!’
Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland, 1957) has created more than seventy works in public spaces, questioning the autonomy, authorship, and resistance of a work of art, and asserting the power of art to touch and transform the other. “I want to use art as a tool to establish a contact with the Other — this is a necessity — and I am convinced that the only possible contact with the Other happens ‘One to One’, as equals,” he wrote. Through his experience of working in public space, Hirschhorn has developed his own guidelines of ‘Presence and Production’ by being present and producing on location during the full course of his projects. “To be ‘present’ and to ‘produce’ means to make a physical statement, here and now. I believe that only through presence — my presence — and only through production — my production — can my work have an impact in public space or at a public location.” Hirschhorn has dedicated works to philosophers, writers, and artists he loves, in the form of large-scale sculpture works such as altars, kiosks, monuments, maps, and collages.
Photo: Tobias Valentin
MONICA
BONVICINI
My Body Became Opressed into a Column may refer to what is known as the ‘atomic shadow,’ a phenomenon pro-duced by the light and heat emitted at the moment of the explosion of an atomic bomb. Where there was a body or an object, today a mark remains. These projections can be found on the floors, walls and other surfaces near the hypocenter of the explosion in Hiroshima.
Monica Bonvicini (Italy, 1965) emerged as a visual artist and started exhibiting internationally in the mid-1990s. Her multifaceted practice investigates the relationship between architecture, power struc-tures, gender and space. Her research translates into works that question the meaning of making art, the ambiguity of language, and the limits and possibilities connected to the ideal of freedom. Dry-humored, direct and imbued with historical, political and social refe-rences, Bonvicini's art never refrains from establishing a critical connection with the sites where it is exhibited, its materials, and the roles of spectator and creator. Since her first solo exhibition at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991, her approach has formally evolved over the years without betraying its analytical force and inclination to challenge the viewer’s perspective while taking hefty sideswipes at patriarchal socio-cultural conventions.
KARL
HOLMQVIST
