Hiroshima Art Prize Granted to Socially Engaged Artist
By Emily Cheung
Portrait of MEL CHIN. Photo by Miriam Heads. Courtesy Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Japanese city of Hiroshima, the first of two cities targeted by the United States’ atomic bombs in August 1945, has named US-based artist Mel Chin as the winner of the 12th Hiroshima Art Prize for his community-engaged art that fosters social transformation.
Prompted by complex environmental and social issues, the North Carolina-based artist embraces an unconventional multidisciplinary practice ranging from sculptures, paintings, and animations to large-scale installations. Chin often creates long-term projects in collaboration with local communities, exploring how art acts jointly with science in sparking social awareness and responsibility. His work has been exhibited internationally at events such as the 1997 Kwangju (Gwangju) Biennale and the Biennale de Lyon in 2001, and at museums across the United States. Major retrospectives of his works were held at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2014 and at the Queens Museum in New York in 2018. Chin was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2019 (the so-called “genius grant”) and was elected a life member of American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.
The triennial international prize acknowledges artistic contributions to the peace of humanity since 1989. Previous winners include American postwar painter Robert Rauschenberg (1992), Iranian photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat (1997), Chinese sculptor and pyrotechnic artist Cai Guo-Qiang (2004), and Palestinian sculptor Mona Hatoum (2018). Recipients receive subsequent exhibitions at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in order to spread the “Spirit of Hiroshima”—a wish for a peaceful world free from nuclear horror. Chin’s commemorative exhibition will engage the city of Hiroshima through collaborations with local communities and the use of creative materials and venues.
After learning he had received the prize, Chin shared a statement on social media, writing: “I continue to be a distant witness to the ongoing savagery of bombardments upon innocent and desperate civilian populations. As an American citizen my obligations force an undeniable complicity.” The prize, he wrote, “strengthens a resolve to resist the support for indefensible cruelty and protest such involvement” and “obligates another commitment to foster ideas and relationships . . . in the pursuit of ideals aligned with resistance to violence and the expansion of empathy.”
Emily Cheung is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
