Sun, Aug 06
|The Makery Los Angeles
44th Annual Peace Exhibition - "A Bridge for Peace"
Time & Location
Aug 06, 2023, 3:00 PM PDT – Aug 27, 2023, 6:00 PM PDT
The Makery Los Angeles, 260 S Los Angeles St, Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA
About The Event
LELA INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS 44TH ANNUAL PEACE EXHIBITION A BRIDGE FOR PEACE
August 6, is the anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, and August 9 the bombing of Nagasaki. As an international collaborative organization of artists from East and West, LELA has hosted a commemorative exhibition at the Nagasaki Peace Museum for 43 years. This year, our 44th Annual Exhibition, A Bridge for Peace, will be held in Little Tokyo, at the Makery Gallery.
2023 8.9 Peace Show Introduction
The argument for a peaceful, safe, and habitable planet should have been easily won. Seemingly, such endowments are a through-line of all our desires. And yet, humanity often seems far from realizing the goal.
Forty-three years running, the Nagasaki Museum of Art and the artist Hideo Sakata, under the aegis of LELA International, has been quietly, serenely making the case for peace. On August 9th, 1945, Sakata, now a long-established Los Angeles artist, was a child playing in a family garden when the nuclear bomb ending WWII fell into his Nagasaki neighborhood.
The horror remains undeniable. And, regrettable, even among those who made the decision at the time to develop and use the weapon.
With brush and pen, stone chisel, and wood-saw, now film and video, serving as forms of expression, an aggregation of peace-driven artists from all walks of life, ages, ethnicities, genders, have returned to ground zero on the ninth day of August to reassert our solidarity with Sakata and the people of Nagasaki.
Moreover, we seek to commemorate the fallen, and celebrate tolerance and understanding among all people.
Sakata, soon-to-be eighty-eight years of age, painting in his Southern California garden at least four hours daily, will this year bring the “8.9 Peace Show” of LELA International to The Makery Gallery in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District. Fittingly, the DTLA art community borders the vibrant and historically important Los Angeles neighborhood known as Little Tokyo.
Hideo Sakata and the directors of LELA hope you will join us in the promotion of memory and hope, and a quiet resolve to achieve peace.
William Hemmerdinger
Los Angeles, California 2023