Art Event of Fukushima in Beppu

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The section of  the tree witch stood at Watatsumi shrine

Hiroko Fujimori (The Fountain staff)

An art event for telling the present and future of Fukushima was held in November for 16 days. Hama Naka Aizu Culture Cooperation Project operated by Fukushima prefectural museum and other organizations such as NPO sponsored this event.

 In Beppu, many art projects have been held for a long time taking hold the region. This art event has a purpose to learn what art can tell and what meaning art can leave to people from Beppu and to make this event the opportunity that people talk together about the future of Fukushima and Japan through art.

This event has four venues near Beppu station and one of them is platform 05 where four artists exhibited. Many works were there like picture, image, and frottage. Some of them were made by Masao Okabe.

Masao Okabe is an artist using frottage. By using this technique, Okabe copies various things directly on them. He copied the epidermis and section of a lot of trees in the region of Fukushima where suffered from radioactivity given name as a series of "Trees which exposed to radiation". The frottage expresses the annual ring and the reality of the cut felled by a chain saw tactually and directly.

The most trees are from Idate village and one of them is what had stood at Watatsumi shrine. Although the tree was a large tree which stood there for more than 100 years, the tree was forced to be cut down because of the high dose. By copying the section of it, he hoped that he could leave the memory of the tree and the people who had looked after it with care.

Maiko Tsukamoto, an assistant head of the curator of Fukushima prefectural museum said "We can tell about Fukushima more softly by making them works than explaining it by words. We hope that people would be fascinated by the power of the works and it would be a start they think about Fukushima. I think art is worth in terms of the ambiguity."

One of the visitors who has been to Namie machi in Fukushima before said "In my opinion, I want to leave the part of the situation in some shapes. If everything cleaned tidily, we wouldn't be able to talk about it each other."



Temporary Place of Pollution Waste

Tsukamoto explaining Fukushima and the works to the visitors


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