The Project to Dismantle the Enola Gay

Post-National Museum of Parakeet History, 2017- ongoing project
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The Project to Dismantle the Enola Gay, 2018
Reeds, branches, wire net, Spanish moss, wood, paper cray, Indian ink, paper, canvas cloth, net, string
85"x70"x87"

This sculpture is a model for a future project to dismantle the Enola Gay. Enola Gay is the Boeing B-29 airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The base is a table that has a reversible structure to show the existence of two worlds: the bottom side has long legs, Western style, and the top side has short legs as it would have in Japan. On the Japanese side, monk parakeets have created a project space, a forest of dead trees surrounded by a wire fence. They make their nests in the trees to prepare for their long project, tying up the Enola Gay and readying themselves for a fire ritual in which they will burn the airplane. During the ritual, they imagine the worst case: a monster black widow spider, the incarnation of Enola’s evil, who has been living and growing on the opposite side of the world, and will come through the ground with its long legs to eat them all. The monk parakeets carefully plan their process because of a past failure: in 1993, curators at the National Air and Space Museum planned to exhibit the Enola Gay along with an account that included the negative effects of the atomic bomb. Because of political pressure, the U.S. Army canceled this plan. Ever since then, the Enola Gay has been exhibited in the U.S. without the revelation of any negative facts, not even how many people were killed in Hiroshima. The Enola Gay, settled at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., was repainted as she was before the Hiroshima mission. She has existed as a beautiful mannequin until now, without revealing the effects of what she did and saw. Therefore, the monk parakeets plan to release the Enola Gay from the nightmares and evil spirits that have gripped her.