Title: When Sadako Met Hind
Designer: Marcus Ho
Paper: 56 cm. washi
"I applaud anyone calling for peace, with the understanding that real peace only exists if it deeply and honestly accounts for and fully ends violence in all its forms. Real peace addresses and corrects wrong-doing in the past and guards against it in the future. It goes hand in hand with justice and requires truth, restoration, reconciliation, reparation."
"Peace cannot co-exist with collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It cannot co-exist with blockades, embargoes, or with 2.2 million people, half of which are children, trapped with no hope of escape or political recourse. It cannot co-exist with murdered journalists, bombed hospitals, or years of protestors being shot and killed at the border. It cannot co-exist with illegal settlements, segregated roads, and the silent, imperial chill that settles over the gaps in the violence - the unspoken geopolitical consensus that a group of people need to unflinchingly accept permanent subjugation and occupation."
Today marks the 71st anniversary of the death of Sadako Sasaki. How do we as origami artists make her legacy, the crane, mean something? I've thought a lot–perhaps too much–about how not to make it mean something. Just look at the Crane Trilogy, an entire essay series devoted to this one model that I've been writing and rewriting for four years straight. But throughout the original trilogy, the revised trilogy, and all the spin-offs and remixes in between, one thing has been missing: what am I actually going to do about it? Well, I have an answer. After Peace Was Never An Option and Gunboat Diplomacy, there was only one logical step to take.
I'm far from the first person to compare the destruction of the Gaza Strip to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. But as an origami artist, I think that connection should carry a different weight than it does to most. I wrote in Sunday in the Park on some loose parallels between Sadako's life and mine, but I'm not dumb enough to think I'm the real mirror of Sadako Sasaki. Hind Rajab is. All the murdered children of Gaza are–all twenty thousand of them. The demand for a free Palestine has been made for nearly eighty years and it has only grown more urgent since the start of the current genocide in 2023. We all know the crane stands for peace. My proposal is simple: it can stand for more.
This piece is dedicated to a number of people: Emma Opitz, who encouraged me to complete the work; Pascal Sturmfels, who provided me with technical advice; Toshiyuki Mimaki, who, when awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, pointed out that it should have gone to healthcare workers in Gaza. And, of course, to Sadako and Hind, who deserved to live full and vibrant lives, cut short by the gross destruction of empire. May their stories never be forgotten.
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