{"id":1642,"date":"2015-10-08T18:26:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T02:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2015-10-08T18:29:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T02:29:10","slug":"black-rain-confronting-memory-and-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/black-rain-confronting-memory-and-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Rain: Confronting Memory and Language"},"content":{"rendered":"
By:Megan Clark \r\nCampus Life Editor<\/pre>\n
The art installation precariously hanging in Hamersly Library is part of a larger art installation that will stay at Western from Sept. 21, 2015 to Dec. 4, 2015. The art showcase titled Black Rain, was created by Yukiyo Kawano.<\/p>\n
Kawano is a second generation Hiroshima bomb survivor, and works as an artist in Portland, Ore. The first floor installation features two low-hanging, large sculptures surrounded by origami cranes.<\/p>\n
The two large structures are \u201cFat Man,\u201d the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and \u201cLittle Boy,\u201d the bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The cranes are symbolic of peace; students are invited to fold one and contribute to the work.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 7, 2015, the artist was able to come to Western and give a talk about her show.<\/p>\n
Kawano discussed the victims of the bombings. There are a \u201cvast amount of hibakusha (bombing victims) living in the shadow, who didn\u2019t have a voice … I\u2019m hoping that my art creates a safe environment to talk about these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked about her process \u2013 which Kawano said can be very messy \u2013 the artist also mentioned the feelings she experiences during the artmaking process. Kawano stated, \u201cI ask myself, \u2018Who am I really, to spend so much time on art?\u2019\u201d She dwells on the fact that she comes from a culture where women are expected to be domestic; breaking this social norm causes her a lot of guilt.<\/p>\n
The artist\u2019s work is very personal to her, which can be seen in the use of her own hair to sew together the bombs. When asked about this, she said, \u201cMy hair going down the drain, when I wash my hair is so horrifying for me … it links to a horror site that I saw again and again growing up in Hiroshima: the loss of women’s long black hair due to radiation sickness.\u201d<\/p>\n
A member from the audience asked her about the Fukushima nuclear disaster that happened in 2011. \u201cFukushima is happening now,\u201d Kawano replied, \u201cbut it will be history very soon….part of the past is now contaminated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her art pieces on the second floor are of a much smaller scale in comparison to the large bombs. One wall is lined with sketches of \u201cLittle Boy;\u201d the pages feature the same repeated image of Kawano wearing her grandmother\u2019s kimono, which had been used to make the bomb.<\/p>\n
Across from this, the sketches for \u201cFat Man\u201d lay out on a table, overlapped with a transparent sheet. Printed on the sheet are conversations that Kawano had had with bomb survivors, both in Japanese and the English translation.<\/p>\n
Referencing how language and memory can be ever changing and easily distorted, Kawano said, \u201cWhen changing the language, the meaning and nuance can shift, so there is a veil.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past, \u201cFat Man\u201d and \u201cLittle Boy\u201d have been accompanied by Butoh, a style of Japanese dance theater that arose in 1959. According to Kawano, \u201cThe movement is capturing the unseen and listening to the silence.\u201d The dance can symbolize konpaku, the space between life and death, which, according to Kawano, allows people to confront their own uncertainty.<\/p>\n
She hopes to find dancers at Western who might be interested in Butoh, hinting that during the time the installation is at Western, a performance could accompany her piece.<\/p>\n
In response to the first floor installation, Leona, a graduate student working on her master\u2019s in teaching, said, \u201cIt\u2019s interesting… it\u2019s forcing me to look at art from a different angle.\u201d Jerrie Lee Parpart, exhibit and archives coordinator, said that she felt Kawano\u2019s art fit well with the other World War II era art being displayed at the library now and in the future.<\/p>\n
Joleen Braasch, a senior education major, said, \u201cI really appreciate Yuki\u2019s work. She did a wonderful job at evoking emotion. And that\u2019s what we need to avoid future nuclear situations; we need to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The art installation precariously hanging in Hamersly Library is part of a larger art installation that will stay at Western from Sept. 21, 2015 to Dec. 4, 2015. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-life"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}