A mound of shells

A mound of shells /
7th Yokohama Triennale, “Afterglow”
July 17–October 11, 2020
Curated by Raqs Media Collective

Installation view of Yokohama Triennale 2020, photo: OTSUKA Keita, Courtesy of Organizing Committee for Yokohama Triennale

Asako Iwama’s A mound of shells (2020), a video projected in a darkened room flanked on both sides by curtains of reflective mirror foil, is based on diaries by the artist’s late father, an ethnographer who stayed in a crop-farming village in a Tamil Eelam region of Sri Lanka. Speaking over footage where she examines various archive materials—diaries, maps, agricultural research documents, black-and-white photographs of the landscape—the artist reflects in digressive, essayistic mode on agricultural water channels, mounting concern about nuclear power, and her parents’ house in Kamaishi, which was destroyed by the 2011 tsunami that precipitated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Text by Koichiro Osaka

Installation view of Yokohama Triennale 2020, photo: OTSUKA Keita, Courtesy of Organizing Committee for Yokohama Triennale

Installation view of Yokohama Triennale 2020, photo: OTSUKA Keita, Courtesy of Organizing Committee for Yokohama Triennale