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COMPASSIONATE GROUNDS: TEN YEARS ON IN TOHOKU – TAASA Review March 2021

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This article was originally found in the March 2021 edition of TAASA Review (Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 20).

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Emily Wakeling T ōhoku, an area devastated ten years ago by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and subsequently transformed through reconstruction works, has been the subject of a growing number of Japanese artists’ video practices as a tangible expression of the ongoing, less-visible impacts the disaster and state-funded ‘recovery’ projects have had on people and their communities.

Compassionate Grounds: Ten Years on in Tōhoku is a group exhibition of Japanese screen-based works held in Australia commemorating the 10th anniversary of the tsunami and consequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in northeastern Japan. Double-layered town / Making a song to replace our positions 2020, Natsumi Seo & Haruka Komori, single-channel video.

Image courtesy the artists On 11 March 2021, 2:46pm, 31 coastal towns in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures were shocked by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and were then lost under a massive ocean surge— up to 40 metres high in areas—with buildings, cars and people swept out to sea...