SCOTLAND’S Makar Kathleen Jamie will join poets from Ukraine to open a new exhibition centred on art and activism in the nuclear age.
The show in Edinburgh is the culmination of the Peace Cranes project, which included the installation of 140,000 paper peace cranes of hope and resilience at St John’s Church in the city centre – one for each of the victims of the US attack on Hiroshima in 1945.
To complete the project, the Consequences exhibition comprises films, photography and installations by over 20 Scottish and international artists who consider the political, humanitarian and ecological consequences of the nuclear age – from the first nuclear attack on Japan up to and including the current situation in Ukraine.
Peace & Justice (Scotland) is collaborating with the Scottish Poetry Library for the show and Jamie, alongside Scottish and Ukrainian poets, will introduce and read at the official exhibition opening on August 19.
The exhibition will close on September 3 with a screening of The Vow From Hiroshima, a documentary about Hiroshima survivor and anti-nuclear campaigner Setsuko Thurlow, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
Iliyana Nedkova, co-curator of the project, said it was “an attempt to understand, document and witness the devastating harm of nuclear power coupled with the human capacity to envision and eventually realise a nuclear weapons-free world”.
She added: “All but a couple of the works in the Consequences exhibition are showing in Scotland for the first time, alongside two brand-new commissions by Pam Skelton and Mare Tralla. However, the raw and urgent work of Ukrainian artists Maxim Dondyuk, Alla Georgieva, Alena Rogozhkina, Daria Svertilova, Elena Subach and Helen Zhgir take centre stage.”
Janet Fenton, Peace & Justice (Scotland), said: ‘It is very fitting that the finale of our Peace Cranes project should take place this year.
“While there is still a way to go, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has outlawed nuclear weapons completely in more than 60 countries, with at least 20 more in the immediate pipeline. In June, those countries met under the auspices of the United Nations to share their plans for complete global nuclear disarmament.”
