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.

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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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YUKARI 
KATO TSUBASA






While F-35 combat aircraft successfully released dummy nuclear bombs at a test exercise in Nevada, Japan announced the purchase of 105 F-35s from the United States. They seem to have forgotten that Japan is the only country victim of nuclear bombing: on August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima, and on August 9, 1945, the B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped the nuclear bomb Fat Man on Nagasaki. Both nuclear attacks killed around 200,000 people, and the 4,000-degree Celsius explosion baked their shadows and left their mark on the ground. The shades of victims who lost their lives still lie on the ground.

Yukari Hirano (1984) and Tsubasa Kato (1984), known as Yukari Kato Tsubasa, are artists noted for their collaborative practice involving performance and video. Their representative Pull and Raise/Down (an ongoing series of performances in which large scale wooden structures replicating buildings or other monuments are pulled up/pulled down from/to the ground using ropes by a large number of participants) relies on spontaneous participation. Since completing a project in Fukushima after the 2011 disaster, their work has become more satirical, which plays with social boundaries. Their performance-related installations create an environment that bridges the gap between participants in the performance and viewers and creates a channel for multiple subjectivities to interact across space and time.