Three years ago a devastating earthquake and tsunami took the lives of 18,500 and the homes of 470,000 more. Not only that, it set off terrifying chain of events that crippled a nuclear reactor, leaking radiation into the air, ground and sea. Part of what makes radiation so dangerous is that it’s invisible, rendering it susceptible to misinformation and credibility.
Art student Hiroyuki Gotoh, who has been focusing his artwork on making the invisible, visible, became fascinated with the virality of radiation and decided to base his senior thesis exhibition on this topic. “The Form of Fukushima” (福島の形相) uses a polar graph drawing machine to visualize publicly available data on radiation levels in Fukushima. In a singularly robotic way, a pen endlessly draws on a canvas, creating a graphical portrayal that is at once beautiful, but also frightening.
“The Form of Fukushima” will be on display this weekend at Tama Art University’s graduation work exhibition.
(this post is part of our review of student artwork from 2014 senior thesis exhibitions. You can see all our coverage of student artwork here)
