Asia
Bontaro Dokuyama
Over There
2015
Over There, 2015
In Over There Bontaro Dokuyama conducted a series of workshops with various people who had been forced to relocate in temporary housing after the Fukushima accident. Participants in the workshop made masks from local newspaper cuttings, included in the installation as well as videos showing these different persons wearing their masks, pointing in the direction of their hometowns, where they can no longer return. Over There portrays those displaced from Fukushima due to the 2011 nuclear disaster, underlining the subjectivity of each person in opposition to the way they are usually considered within the Japanese society or by the media, calling them “victims from the disaster.”
Bontaro Dokuyama became an artist after the triple disaster of March 2011 that irrevocably damaged his hometown of Fukushima, “sensing that everything that had been taught to him was a lie.” Previously working as an architect, he then started his artistic practice under a new name in order to underline the beginning of this new life. Given by the artist friend Sachiko Kazama, this name refers to an important manga artist and anarchist Bontaro Saikawa.
By employing wide-ranging methodologies and approaches including political activism, installation or video, Dokuyama investigates forgotten memories of the past, places, issues and phenomena that have become hard to see in contemporary society. His artworks underline how in our unpredictable modern world, anyone could become a victim at any time. Facing the past and investigating what has been left behind, as well as what has disappeared, Dokuyama reveals the memories and emotions of people who have fallen through the cracks of history. He questions our conformity and dependency on a given social mechanism, and seeks to uncover the complexity of the reality which is often hidden from our sight.