Showing the invisible

A new exhibition by Japanese artist Masamichi Kagaya attempts to show the normally invisible results of the Fukushima disaster as a series of print-outs representing the contamination.

The artist collected contaminated samples from Fukushima and transformed the analyses into auto-radiographs, visual representations of the radiation levels he found in the samples.

The exhibition, at the Yasashii Yokan Gallery in Tokyo, Japan, is called “Image of Radiation from Fukushima”. But is it really art? Kagaya says his art simply shows scientific fact in any easily understood visual form.

Collecting the samples involved travelling into the exclusion area, as close as only 10kms away from the damaged Fukushima power plant, meaning Kagaya exposed himself to up to ten times the recommended levels of radioactivity. But he hopes that in the long term his work will be used in school text books and will become part of the historical legacy of the disaster.