Pieces of peace

“We’re living in extra time,” says Reyes, 50. “There have been so many close calls and near-accidents [at nuclear facilities]. No one can be trusted with nuclear weapons, in the sense that no one should have the power to kill us all. It is difficult for people in the United States to understand this. It’s very, very, very clear if you live outside the United States.”

Pedro Reyes: Direct Action features firearms repurposed by Reyes into vases and playable instruments — far smaller than nuclear warheads, but symbolic of the change Reyes wants to see in the world. It continues through May 8 at SITE Santa Fe and includes elements from two previous Reyes exhibitions. Palas por Pistolas [Shovels for Guns], from 2008, involved transforming 1,527 guns into shovels that were then used to plant 1,527 trees. Disarm, from 2012, is a series of musical instruments made from more than 6,700 combined donated firearms. The exhibition also includes sculptures, video, and other art with the Disarm instruments hanging when they’re not in use, cutting a distinctive silhouette into the white wall behind them.

Should anyone doubt the instruments are playable, musicians are providing proof via a series of First Friday events. Jesse Tatum is set to play Disarm Flute, Sabrina Griffith Disarm Violin, and Damon Griffith Disarm Guitar at 5:30 p.m. April 7 at the art space, followed by Leticia Gonzales playing Disarm Violin at 5:30 p.m. May 5. The performances are followed by tours focused on the musical elements of the exhibition.

The heavy, painted repurposed instruments are far from traditional in multiple ways. The neck of Disarm Guitar is made of a rifle barrel, while the metal outlines of former handguns are clearly visible on the body of one of the Disarm Violin pieces. The former instrument has three strings, the latter, two. They appear rusty, bolstering the sensation that the weapons they’re constructed from are of another time and place, no longer a potential danger.

Reyes hopes the performances and display bring attention to an issue he fears is overshadowed by concerns such as climate and social changes.

“I think that the subject is, right now, in a blind spot of people’s consciousness,” he says. “Millennials and Generation Z just don’t have it on their map. And perhaps baby boomers and Generation X were so traumatized by the awareness of it that they don’t want to remember. So it’s the most pressing subject of all, because we’re very close to seeing nuclear war in our lifetimes. Paradoxically, it ranks very low in people’s concerns.”

That confounds Reyes, who points out that the Doomsday Clock — which reflects the likelihood of human-caused global catastrophe, according to members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — was moved Jan. 24 to 90 seconds to midnight. That’s the closest the 76-year-old figurative clock has ever been to midnight. The change was a result of fears over Russia’s war on Ukraine damaging a nuclear reactor there.

Direct Action and its anti-weapons message were unveiled Feb. 3, two weeks after the Legislature convened less than a mile from SITE Santa Fe. As of early March, a bill aimed at slowing plans for a radioactive waste disposal storage site between Hobbs and Carlsbad was being reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee following passage in the Senate. That facility would store highly radioactive uranium from reactor sites nationwide.

No fewer than seven bills were introduced aimed at restricting or changing gun laws, with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham stating in late February that a special session might be required to ensure passage of an initiative to ban automatic weapons before later softening that stance.

Additionally, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in late February that his nation would no longer take part in the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which calls for Russia and the U.S. to submit to inspections of their stockpiles and to cap the number of their warheads. It was the final remaining nuclear weapons treaty between the two nations.

Curator Brandee Caoba acknowledges that the exhibition is well-timed, especially given the proposal to store nuclear waste in New Mexico.

“It’s just terrifying,” she says of that plan. “With the development of these catastrophic nuclear waste facilities and the implications of them, I really hope it helps people kind of get on board with, ‘What is happening here?’”

Caoba adds that she hadn’t previously seen work similar to Reyes’, describing it as renewing.

“You’re cutting and reshaping metal to make something new, with a new purpose, that gives off sound and vibration,” she says. “The music made from the instruments that Pedro has built, those guns are decommissioned firearms that were likely used in crimes. They function as a requiem for people who lost their lives.”

On Feb. 4, Reyes engaged in a public discussion about transforming deadly materials into art with Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence and co-founder of Guns to Gardens, a gun buy-back program in New Mexico. He wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d receive, given New Mexico’s role in the development of nuclear weapons and the employment of more than 10,000 people at Los Alamos National Lab alone.

“There’s people that believe that nuclear weapons helped win the Second World War, which is not really true,” he says. “The real reason the Japanese surrendered was because they were being invaded by Russia at the same time. They chose to surrender to the United States instead of Russia.”

The public was appropriately fearful of the nuclear threat in the 1980s, Reyes says, partly as a result of films such as The Day After that depict the bleak realities of a nuclear attack for survivors. That film was broadcast on ABC in 1983, attracting more than 100 million viewers. Four years later, it aired on Soviet state television.

“But right now, if you see the advertisements or the propaganda that the national labs put out there, or if you go to their museums, there are all these lies that they tell themselves that what they are doing is actually useful,” Reyes says.

Nuclear responsibility transcends politics, he says, acknowledging rising concerns about irresponsible use of the weapons when former President Donald Trump was in office.

“But you know, [President Joe] Biden also has made very dangerous declarations, like when he goes out there and says about Putin, ‘We have to get rid of this man,’” Reyes says. “Those are not words that a head of state should say.”

This isn’t SITE Santa Fe’s first connection with Reyes. Earlier in 2022, it commissioned his video Under the Cloud, featuring New Mexicans talking about nuclear colonialism. Direct Action did, however, result in Reyes’ first visits to SITE Santa Fe; he came from Mexico City in September and December 2022, and February.

While Viscoli and Reyes met for the first time in December, their connection goes back years. Viscoli was so inspired after reading about Reyes’ work in 2008 that she co-founded New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, Caoba says. That’s the year Reyes started his ongoing Palas por Pistolas project, which led to Disarm four years later.

Outside SITE Santa Fe, visitors will see nine anti-nuclear-weapons posters created by international artists recruited by Reyes.

Caoba says Direct Action asks viewers to reexamine the legacy of the human race, as well as how they define respect.

“I’m not being human-specific,” she says. “Respect for the land, respect for the water, respect for the air, respect for other creatures living on Earth.”