Naoya Hatakeyama's Tsunami Trees exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery explores post-disaster landscapes

Naoya Hatakeyama's exhibition Tsunami Trees at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo from 31 August to 28 September presents ten large-format photographs capturing trees affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The artist lost his home and mother in the disaster triggered on 11 March 2011, which remains Japan's most devastating natural event. Rather than focusing on narratives of grief or resilience, Hatakeyama's images depict tranquil settings where solitary trees with irregular dead branches stand improbably yet steadfast. The series includes two final images showing bare trees subsumed by water, highlighting their expendability. A gallery handout notes the trees are sometimes revered, sometimes inconsiderately cut down. The exhibition also features Hatakeyama's related series Kochi (2021–2022), documenting tsunami-evacuation towers built along Kochi prefecture's coast, where locals face warnings of a potential 34-metre wave from an anticipated Nankai megathrust earthquake within 30 years. Hatakeyama's earlier works like Quarry (1986–1991), Blast (1995–2010), and River series (1993–1994) explored material transformation and human-landscape interfaces, but Tsunami Trees leaves an uncertain, unpunctuated feeling. The images appear in the Winter 2024 issue of ArtReview Asia.