“The Hiroshima Panels” Exhibition
Pioneer Works
This event has ended.
On the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pioneer Works presents a series of exhibitions and programs exploring the discourse between art and trauma. The Hiroshima Panels, an exhibition of monumental paintings depicting the bombings and aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Japanese artists Iri and Toshi Maruki, and A Body in Fukushima, a series of photographs depicting post-nuclear disaster Fukushima, collaboratively created by movement artist Eiko Otake and photographer William Johnston.
Concurrent programs will include: a solo movement performance by Eiko Otake; a discussion on the genetic transfer of trauma between Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Dr. Rachel Yehuda, Professor of Biological Sciences Timothy Mousseau, and Mitchie Takeuchi, whose family founded the Hiroshima Red Cross in 1937; a discussion around Peter Galison’s film Containment as part of Pioneer Works resident Janna Levin’s program Scientific Controversies, and a series of educational forums in partnership with Youth Arts New York and Hibakusha Stories, featuring testimonies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.
The Hiroshima Panels, known colloquially as the Guernica of Japan, were painted by husband and wife Iri Maruki (1901–1995) and Toshi Maruki (1902–2000) over a 32-year period (1950–1982). Iri, a skilled sumi-e ink painter, and Toshi, a figure painter and children’s book illustrator, entered Hiroshima three days after the bombing took the lives of 140,000 people, in search of family. The trauma caused by witnessing this unparalleled magnitude of human suffering had a significant artistic impact on the couple and catalyzed the decades-long creation of the panels.
Keeping with the Japanese byobu tradition, The Hiroshima Panels are painted on folding screens made of wood and paper using mostly black ink. Responding to the many facets of devastation caused by the atomic bombs, the artists used powerful flashes of crimson red and sky blue to highlight certain elements of the graphic scenes. Each panel measures 180 cm. x 270 cm. and is divided in eight folds of equal size. Six out of the 15 panels in the series will be on display at Pioneer Works: Ghost (1950), Fire (1950), Death of American Prisoners of War (1952), Petition (1955), Floating Lanterns (1969), and Crows (1972). Vacillating between almost photographic realness and non-representational abstraction, the panels complicate, challenge, and deepen common perceptions of the nuclear bombing and its aftermath.
Also on display will be a series of looping films and videos, such as the Academy Award–nominated Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima (1986), which captures the Marukis in their decades-long collaboration to create The Hiroshima Panels.
Produced by Yoshiko Hayakawa and curated by Yukinori Okamura, this will be the first time The Hiroshima Panels have been seen in New York in 45 years.
Project Space: A Body in Fukushima
November 13 - December 20
A Body in Fukushima is a series of color photographs taken in 2014 in post-triple-disaster Fukushima by Eiko Otake (of internationally acclaimed choreography and dance team Eiko & Koma) and photographer and historian William Johnston.
In 2014, Otake and Johnston followed abandoned train tracks through desolate stations into eerily vacant towns and fields in Fukushima, Japan. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the explosions of the Daiichi nuclear plants made the area uninhabitable. Sometimes in vulnerable gestures and at other times in a fierce dance, Otake embodies grief, anger and remorse. Johnston’s crystalline images capture her with the cries of the Fukushima landscapes. “By placing my body in these places,” she says, “I thought of the generations of people who used to live there. I danced so as not to forget.” A project of witness, remembrance and empathy, A Body in Fukushima grapples with the reality of human failure. As Johnston writes, “By witnessing events and places, we actually change them and ourselves in ways that may not always be apparent but are important.”
Media
Schedule
from November 13, 2015 to December 20, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-11-13 from 18:00 to 21:00
Following a curatorial walkthrough with Yukinori Okamura, exhibiting artist Eiko Otake will present a solo dance performance amongst the artworks.
Artist(s)
Eiko Otake, William Johnston et al.