Pedro Reyes' Anti-Nuclear Exhibition Opens at Museo Nivola in Sardinia

Pedro Reyes' first solo exhibition in Italy, 'Zero Armi Nucleari', opened at the Museo Nivola in Orani, Sardinia, on September 24, 2022, as part of the inaugural edition of CONTEMPORANEA – Sculpture and Places, a three-day international symposium on sculpture's role in contemporary art, organized by Fondazione di Sardegna. The symposium ran from September 24 to 26 in Tortolì, where the public sculpture project Su Logu de S'Iscultura, curated by gallerist Edoardo Manzoni, is located. The exhibition, running until February 22, 2023, features an inflatable atomic cloud sculpture reading 'Zero Nuclear Weapons', commissioned in 2020 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for the Atomic Amnesia project. A second work, 'Statua di Pace' (2022), a wooden androgynous figure with a hand-dove, references Costantino Nivola's 'Hombre de Paz' (1968). The show includes hand-painted protest signs, clothing by designer Carla Fernández, and photographic documentation of mass resistance from the 1960s to 1980s. A luminous countdown shows 100 seconds to apocalypse, while 'Stockpile' uses missile-shaped balloons to represent the world's 12,705 nuclear warheads. Reyes, born in Mexico City in 1972, uses sculpture as a medium to address social and political issues, particularly nuclear threat, which he has been active against since 2020.