Natural Disaster, Trauma and Activism in the Art of Takamine Tadasu

Abstract

Abstract Takamine Tadasu's Fukushima Esperanto (2012) is an immersive project that responds to the unfolding tragedies of the March 2011 Tōhoku disaster. Connecting the experiences of Tōhoku with the devastating floods experienced across Queensland, Australia in the same year, Fukushima Esperanto invites reflection on trauma by a transnational audience. The artist's assemblage of obsolete technologies and objects of childhood play expresses Takamine's opposition to, and Japan's conflicted relationship with, nuclear energy.