The Light - Portraits of the 'Hibakusha'

At 00.15am on the 6th August 2010 in London it will be 08.15am in Hiroshima and it will have been 65 years since ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima by the USA’s B-29 bomber ‘Enola Gay’. The exhibition of the 65 Hibakusha portrait paintings will last for 65 days, one for each year since the bombs were dropped on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each painting will be accompanied by a detailed description of each subject’s haunting recollection of exactly how they came to survive and be found after the bombing.

Hibakusha are survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese word translates literally to “bomb affected people”. There are no names on any of the Hibakusha Portraits as is the tradition in Japan all are ‘subjects’ and always remain unnamed.

These paintings are not just portraits they are reminders of the consequences of our actions and the dreadful ways in which we choose to treat one another. One of the exhibitions aims is to remind the world of man’s inhumanity to man and for each portrait painted to remind us all that we are human with a responsibility for each other’s well being and that such dreadful acts should never be forgotten.

An accompanying day of lectures will be held on the 7th of October in the ‘Brunei
Gallery Lecture Theatre’ with speakers from Hiroshima City University, The University
of London and Kingston University.