GALLERY 2
opening: saturday 1 august, 2pm
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YASUKO TODA
august 1–23
Our consumer-driven pop culture is constantly remixing images and stories, stripping them of their original contexts to assign new meanings. As these new meanings accumulate, they obscure the experiences and histories we are supposed to learn from.
Reassociate began as a critical response to the "Barbenheimer" meme, which used bright pink images of nuclear explosions to celebrate the simultaneous box-office release of Barbie and Oppenheimer, overlooking the imperial and genocidal legacy of nuclear weapons. Looking at this and other examples of contemporary media, it became clear that the human reality of nuclear destruction had faded from view, becoming little more than the punchline to a throwaway joke. If we forget the horror of these weapons, how will we know never to use them again?
The effects of nuclear weapons are not limited to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are shared by communities affected by atomic testing around the world (known in Japan as the Global Hibakusha), most of whom live in the Global South. For many, these devastating impacts continue across generations, reminding us that nuclear violence is not simply a historical event but an ongoing legacy.
As I developed this work, Israel's genocide in Gaza made these questions feel even more urgent. Public statements by Israeli ministers expressing openness to the use of nuclear weapons on the Palestinian people echoed the logic that has long been used to justify mass violence against civilian populations, showing that this legacy is not confined to the past. Witnessing these events unfold in real time reinforced the central question behind this work: how repeated use of images and symbols of war to convey mundane messages can distance us from the lived reality of mass violence.
The installation brings together numerous hariko (Japanese papier mâché) dolls inspired by memoirs from an atomic bomb survivors' archive with animation informed by research into war, colonialism, and a research trip to Hiroshima. Together, these fragmented works invite viewers to make connections across time and place rather than encounter these events as a single linear narrative.
Reassociate suggests that cycles of violence persist because we separate past atrocities from those unfolding in the present. Through quiet, abstract craft it challenges the loud repetition of violent symbols in popular discourse and asks us to reconsider their use.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yasuko Toda is a Japanese artist and illustrator based in Naarm. Yasuko’s work draws from the formative experiences of growing up in Tokyo, her interests in the Arab culture, and her emigration to Australia. From these emerges a thematic palette of issues as seemingly disparate as Islamophobia, feminism, being Asian, and climate change. Her strength is her ability to express complex issues very honestly, yet softly. Yasuko’s practice is primarily in illustration, zines, animation and comics/manga.