Straight from Andrew Chatfield:
“A Body in Fukushima” is a haunting series of color photographs and videos presented in a groundbreaking exhibition across all three of Wesleyan’s galleries. Last year, dancer-choreographer Eiko Otake and photographer-historian William Johnston followed abandoned train tracks through desolate stations into eerily vacant towns and fields in Fukushima, Japan. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the explosions of the Daiichi nuclear plant made the area uninhabitable. Sometimes in vulnerable gestures and at other times in a fierce dance, Ms. Otake embodies grief, anger, and remorse. Mr. Johnston’s crystalline images capture her with the cries of the Fukushima landscapes. “By placing my body in these places,” she says, “I thought of the generations of people who used to live there. I danced so as not to forget.” A project of witness, remembrance, and empathy, “A Body in Fukushima” grapples with the reality of human failure. As Mr. Johnston writes, “By witnessing events and places, we actually change them and ourselves in ways that may not always be apparent but are important.”
William Johnston is Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan, and Eiko Otake is Visiting Artist in the Dance Department and the College of East Asian Studies.
Locations/Dates:
South Gallery, Erza and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, 283 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
Tuesday, February 3 through Sunday, March 1, 2015
Tuesday-Sunday, Noon-5pm
Davison Art Center, 301 High Street, Middletown, Connecticut
Tuesday, February 3 through Thursday, March 5, 2015
Tuesday-Sunday Noon-4pm
College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center, 343
Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
Tuesday, February 3 through Sunday, May 24, 2015
Tuesday-Sunday, Noon-4pm
Closed Friday, March 6 through Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Date: February 3rd through May 24th
Place: Across all three of Wesleyan’s Galleries!
Cost: Free!
Nancy Ottmann Albert (MALS ’94) will speak about her photographic exhibition “Documents in Black and White,” currently on display in the Special Collections & Archives exhibit cases. The works are selected from the Nancy Ottmann Albert Collection, which she recently donated to Wesleyan, and span the thirty years she spent documenting New England’s built environment. In 1981, inspired by Walker Evans and the FSA photographers, Albert began to photograph textile mills and industrial sites throughout New England. She returned over the years to record their decline and disappearance, shooting black and white film in a medium format camera. Further exploration led her to seek out other endangered structures and landscapes. These include mental institutions emptied by changing philosophies of treatment and a commissioned study of Long River Village, Middletown’s oldest housing project, prior to its demolition. The exhibition also contains images of roadside and urban vernacular architecture; barns and abandoned homesteads; filling stations; drive-in theaters. All of the work, which includes gelatin silver photographs, was printed by the artist. The exhibition will be open through Friday, December 16, 2016.
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