Ten years on from the devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis on the Tōhoku coast in Japan, this project is a curated display of screen-based artworks by Japanese and Japanese-Australian artists responding to survivors’ irreversible losses over the past decade. The works, whether responding from afar or directly capturing Tōhoku’s transformed landscapes, focus on the concept of recovery for its displaced communities.

Ten years on from the devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis on the Tohoku coast in Japan, this project is a curated display of screen-based artworks by Japanese and Japanese-Australian artists responding to survivors’ irreversible losses over the past decade. The works, whether responding from afar or directly capturing Tōhoku’s transformed landscapes, focus on the concept of recovery for its displaced communities.

To coincide with the first iteration of ‘Compassionate Grounds: Ten Years on in Tohoku’, curator Emily Wakeling will give a curatorial talk on the project on Saturday 8th May from 2pm.

Rikuzentakata in southern Iwate Prefecture was one of the hardest hit by the 2011 tsunami. Masahiro Hasunuma captures the post-earthquake landscape of Rikunzentakata (Takata for short) via delicate hand-drawn animations inspired by his interactions with locals and their relationship to sites in the town. His short, impressionistic animations take something as overwhelming as a major disaster and processes it through small and beautiful phenomena: in Rikuzentakata animation 2019, a ginger cat follows a group of school children in front of the former school building, with snow beginning to fall as it did on the evening of March 11th. ‘The former [pre-tsunami] cityscape of Rikuzentakata is no longer there’, Hasunuma wrote at the time of his 2019 residency, ‘nor is the new cityscape that awaits construction’. The construction project adds 10-12 metres of ‘tsunami-proof’ high ground to the former shopping area—seen in the bare hills in Hasunuma’s images. Many of Tōhoku’s tsunami-hit towns are undergoing similar defensive re-groundings, but Takata’s is by far the largest.

Ten years on from the devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis on the Tohoku coast in Japan, this project is a curated display of screen-based artworks by Japanese and Japanese-Australian artists responding to survivors’ irreversible losses over the past decade. The works, whether responding from afar or directly capturing Tōhoku’s transformed landscapes, focus on the concept of recovery for its displaced communities.

This text features Emily Wakeling in conversation with Helen Styles, July 2021. It is published on the occasion of the exhibition Compassionate Grounds: Ten Years on in Tohoku at Composite throughout 2021.

Rikuzentakata in southern Iwate Prefecture was one of the hardest hit by the 2011 tsunami. Masahiro Hasunuma captures the post-earthquake landscape of Rikunzentakata (Takata for short) via delicate hand-drawn animations inspired by his interactions with locals and their relationship to sites in the town. His short, impressionistic animations take something as overwhelming as a major disaster and processes it through small and beautiful phenomena: in Rikuzentakata animation 2019, a ginger cat follows a group of school children in front of the former school building, with snow beginning to fall as it did on the evening of March 11th. ‘The former [pre-tsunami] cityscape of Rikuzentakata is no longer there’, Hasunuma wrote at the time of his 2019 residency, ‘nor is the new cityscape that awaits construction’. The construction project adds 10-12 metres of ‘tsunami-proof’ high ground to the former shopping area—seen in the bare hills in Hasunuma’s images. Many of Tōhoku’s tsunami-hit towns are undergoing similar defensive re-groundings, but Takata’s is by far the largest.

This text was written as part of the exhibition series Compassionate Grounds: Ten Years on in Tohoku. View more information on the project website here .