HÔSHANÔ: PENSER L'APRÈS FUKUSHIMA

The exhibition HÔSHANÔ: Art and Life in a Post-Fukushima World initiates a dialogue between Quebec and Japan regarding the Fukushima disaster, which Jean-Luc Nancy termed a "civilizational catastrophe." Its consequences disturb life itself, haunt the collective memory and change our way of understanding the world. Hôshanô, which means "radioactivity" in Japanese, questions the nature of this invisible enemy released during the fusion of the reactor core of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Beyond the ruins and devastation of the Tôhôku region made visible in the media, the radioactive threat is invisible and insidious; it contaminates all the elements that surround it and is inscribed on a vertiginous duration calculated in terms of half-lives. The era of the atom becomes that of self-destruction, that of a war without an enemy. Thinking after Fukushima becomes imperative for the future of our civilization. Today, on the sixth anniversary of the triple catastrophe and the official entry of the world into the Anthropocene era, this exhibition is introspective: what kind of world will we bequeath to future generations?

Michel Huneault presents eight photographs from his series Post Tohoku: a material and environmental reconstruction of the disaster areas depicting the ruins of the cities affected.