In the valley below Times Square's electrified billboards and skyscrapers stands a 30-foot tall inflatable sculpture: a horror comedy mashup of a child’s bouncy castle and a nuclear mushroom cloud. At the very top are big black letters that demand “Zero Nukes” in the eight languages of the countries thought to possess nuclear weapons: English, Russian, Mandarin, Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Urdu and French.
The art work, which is also called "Zero Nukes," was made by the Mexican artist Pedro Reyes. It's the centerpiece of "Amnesia Atómica NYC," a public art project commissioned by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and presented by Times Square Arts, which is meant to generate conversations around the anti-nuclear movement through performances, a virtual-reality experience, participatory art work and much more.
But given nuclear saber-rattling from Vladimir Putin, an Iran nuclear deal in limbo, and over a dozen missile tests in North Korea this year alone, is now the time to talk about disarmament?
Artist Pedro Reyes embraces emphatic themes of disarmament in his art works.
For Reyes, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
“If you care about the environment, there will be no environment to save if a nuclear weapon goes off,” Reyes told Gothamist on the day "Zero Nukes" was erected. “Or if you care about social justice, there will be no society left after nuclear war.”
His sculpture’s stark black-and-white aesthetic leaves no doubt about his feelings regarding the over 12,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.
“I think that the goal should be full universal disarmament, like, get all of them,” said Reyes, whose oeuvre includes works that have incorporated destroyed weapons, most notably "Disarm" — a project in which revolvers and machine guns were crushed and rendered useless, then transformed into musical instruments.
“I think that the goal should be full universal disarmament, like, get all of them,” Reyes said. His oeuvre includes works that have incorporated destroyed weapons, most notably "Disarm," a project that featured weapons that were crushed and rendered useless — including revolvers and machine guns — transformed into musical instruments.
This isn’t the first time New York City has played host to an anti-nuclear protest. June will mark the 40th anniversary of the nuclear disarmament demonstration where as many as one million people gathered in Central Park. The 1982 rally took place around the time the United Nations held their Second Special Session on Disarmament.
But that kind of attention, explained the project’s curator, Pedro Alonzo, waned in the years that followed.
“That doesn’t happen anymore,” Alonzo said. “Very few people are involved. It’s very small now. We need to revitalize that. We need to get back into that. We need to rally around this cause.”
For Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the "Amnesia Atómica NYC" program is a chance to get critical conversations started in one of the busiest corners in the country. It's a traveling exhibition; before arriving in New York, it was in Mexico City in 2020. In each city it heads to, local conversations and events will be programmed.
“What we're trying to do is engage the public and give them ways to act, see how they can get engaged, talk to their leaders and our leaders to try to change the direction that we're on,” Bronson said. “Because right now, we're entering into an arms race 2.0. that everyone knows is dangerous and expensive, and really wasteful.”
More than 12 thousand missile-shaped balloons will be distributed to the public during "Amnesia Atómica NYC"
On the day I visited, "Zero Nukes" was swaying from the wind, almost mimicking its real-world counterpart.
“We knew that this artwork would require constant vigilance,” said Jean Cooney, the director of Times Square Arts. “And really, you know, as we were talking, this metaphor emerged in that as an artwork, it's as vulnerable as we all find ourselves in this global moment, and really requires this all-hands-on-deck type of vigilance to navigate.”
"Amnesia Atómica NYC" will run till May 24th, and if you happen to find yourself in Times Square during the run, you may get one of the 12,075 rocket-shaped balloons Reyes created for the event. They’ll be handed out at 4 p.m. daily, and each one represents one of the many nuclear warheads in the world today.
This story was updated to include Korean among the languages representing countries thought to possess nuclear weapons.
