They were selected for the exhibition through an in-depth review process conducted by the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in collaboration with HCU. Kou’s lush renderings of abundant vegetation reflect her close observations of the region and her intense engagement with the landscape.Īll of the artists are alumni of Hiroshima City University (HCU), and Furukata is also a professor there. Kana Kou’s richly detailed and massive multi-panel landscape drawings and installations frequently depict the Seto Inland Sea. Shot and presented in real time, Isayama’s single-channel video screen (2017) and the multi-channel video Objects (2017) portray porcelain objects disintegrating in an operatic arc of creation and destruction.
Genki Isayama ’s artworks explore natural and dynamic processes such as decay and chemical reactions. The artwork alludes to the Enola Gay plane and its cargo-the atomic bomb, named Little Boy, that it dropped on Hiroshima. Taro Furukata’s installation The Mother and the Little Boy (2018) consists of a collection of items arranged on tables, including a photograph of Paul Tibbets, a vinyl disc of the song “Enola Gay” (by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), and fabric dyed by hand using food-based pigments and silkscreened with stars. In Megumi Fukuda’s installation Each Day Begins with the Sun Rising and Ends with the Sun Setting (2013–14), solar panels activate and illuminate discarded chairs, lamps, and television sets. T he artists in Each Day Begins with the Sun Rising use social activism, historical research, performance, site-specific installation, drawing, painting, and video to address politics and resilience in the region. The social and political ramifications of the bombings have permeated nearly every sector of Japanese society, particularly the Seto Inland Sea region, which is dealing with ongoing fallout from nuclear energy policies and environmental degradation. Together, they explore the profound cultural, political, and social impacts of the United States’ World War II bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The exhibition Each Day Begins with the Sun Rising: Four Artists from Hiroshima features contemporary Japanese artists Megumi Fukuda, Taro Furukata, Genki Isayama, and Kana Kou.