Image: Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima
A new exhibition by American artist Mel Chin has opened at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, following his selection for the 12th Hiroshima Prize, an award presented by the city of Hiroshima to artists whose work contributes to peace through art. The exhibition began on July 25 and runs through October 12.
The report describes Chin’s prize-winning practice as one that addresses war, the environment and discrimination across sculpture, painting and other media. Over the course of roughly five decades, the artist has produced 65 works now on view in Hiroshima. Among them is 'Our Strange Flower of Democracy', a work that recreates, at full size, a bomb used by the United States during the Vietnam War. Presented so that it does not immediately read as a bomb, the piece is framed as a challenge to the absurdity of war.
Another new work, 'Invitation', was inspired by the manga 'Barefoot Gen'. In the piece, the younger self of Keiji Nakazawa, the manga’s creator, stands on a drum evoking an atomic bomb. According to the report, the work calls on viewers to “stand together” so that the “drum of the start of war” is not struck.
Chin, who is based in the United States, received the Hiroshima Prize, which is awarded every three years by the city. The exhibition marking the prize is being held at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Hiroshima’s Minami Ward, with the event listed in the source as 'Mel Chin Exhibition'.
The report also quotes Chin saying that the international situation is “extremely serious” and that he hopes viewers will look at the works and realize that they themselves can do something. The exhibition brings together work made over a long span of his career alongside newer pieces tied directly to Hiroshima’s own history and to the broader themes that have shaped his practice.
