This is Silence: Kazakh street artist takes on nuclear waste

Social media in Kazakhstan has recently gone crazy for local street artist Pasha Cas, who has just presented his new work This is Silence, taking on the subject of nuclear waste.

This is Silence features a large-scale image of the character from Edvard Munch’s The Scream series (1893–1910), painted onto an edifice at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. Together with an accompanying video, the work forms the artist’s manifesto.

“Since 1949, 616 nuclear bombs were detonated at the Semipalatinsk Test Site and 1.5 million people were affected. In the 21st century, Kazakhstan turned into a nuclear waste dump. The state continued to experiment on people. It is Silence. Horror. Despair. Crime.,” says Cas in the video.

The work draws attention to the issue of nuclear waste disposal in Kazakhstan, and the continuing impact of the Soviet nuclear weapon testing conducted at the test site from 1949–1989, although President Nursultan Nazarbayev officially closed the test site in August 1991.

Source: Astana Times