CRISTIAN
FRANCO




Stop Nuclear Bomb is a graphic description of the period of nuclear energy mainly used for war purposes. Harry S. Truman made the decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, where more than 220,000 people died. The poster is a reminder of the terrible event. The image shows two Sentinels —last generation nuclear missiles— emerge from Truman’s head, emulating horns as a representation of evil.

Cristian Franco (Tecate, 1980) has worked from the observation of the languages and the aesthetics of the underground subculture, but also from its concatenation with popular culture and the discursive structure of history, politics, advertising, and marketing. Franco uses a dark and insolent humor to destabilize and dismember the components of the dominant narratives, and to highlight the weaknesses in the construction of the discourse, of what is cultural, or even of its counterparts that have been suppressed and subhistorized. The images in his work, his performative work, and the research methodologies he uses, cross and blur the separation lines between truth and fiction; This strategy allows him to question the public, become a witness to uncertainty, and to disconnect himself as a participant in the stories he addresses. The evolution of his work —which ranges from drawing, performance, sculpture, textiles, prints and text— intertwines disciplines, diffuses its limits, and results in a disconcerting imagery that provokes our notion of coherence. Operating from the unexpected, Cristian Franco seeks a confrontation with what is uncomfortable, but also with the discovery and an approach to the world from other fronts.


















Organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes
in collaboration with ICAN






ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is an exhibition of posters that call for universal nuclear disarmament. Each made by a different artist, the group comprises historical and newly
commissioned works that detail a cultural history of disarmament movements and evidence the diversity of ways in which artists have expressed the need to ban the bomb. ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is designed for maximum agility and economic effectiveness, relying on a black and white palette both for its impact and ease o reproduction. We asked artists to ensure their works can exist on a variety of supports, ephemera such as posters, postcards, billboards, banners, flags, t-shirts and social media posts, as we aspire to achieve the widest possible circulation of this message.

ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB presents the works of foundational conceptual artists Art & Language; pop hero, Keith Haring; legendary feminists, Guerrilla Girls; performance artists Regina José Galindo and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, as well
as eminent sculptors Magdalena Abakanowicz and Isamu Noguchi. It also features indelible photographs by Robert Del Tredici and Ken Domon alongside protest graphics from social movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), founded in 1958 and still active; the epic Peace Squadron and Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms (VAANA); and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Additionally, it examines how stories are told, from the theater of Bread and Puppet to films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Marguerite Duras / Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, to an unexpected survey of literature, from an early
anticipation of an atomic bomb, first envisioned by H.G. Wells in 1918, to the viscera spoken word poetry of Jayne Cortez.

ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB, organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes in collaboration with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), is presented on the occasion of the Second Meeting of State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) held at the United Nations in 2023.

To organize en exhibition of ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB please contact curatorial assistant Verana Codina.



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