SMILE
Hiroshima 25th Aug. 2007

Akshun & Installation as part of the exbition Hiroshima Art document. The exhibition was held in the former Bank of Japan one of the few buildings left standing after the atomic bomb blast on 15th Aug. 1945. A handful of buildings survived due to the fact that they ahppened to be at the epicentre of the blast. However all the people were vaporized.

He tells me about a young woman he knew some years ago in Japan.She was from the city of Hiroshima.He said he asked her about the bomb.What did she remember about he bomb. Her Grandfather’s smile she said. His smile.He thought about the young woman’s Grandfather smiling in a garden on a fresh morning in Spring, in Hiroshima.

He smiled to himself, imagining the memoryof the young woman’s Grandfather and his smile.And then he thought about the young woman again.She was young. She’s too young he thought.How could she have remembered her Grandfather’s smile.Perhaps it was a photograph.No, she said, it was not a photograph, it was his smile.

This was all, all that was left after the bomb;her Grandfather’s false teeth.And down through the years she had kept that those teeth,would take them out, look them over,and smile.

Install-Akshun, Hiroshima, Aug. 2007