Art in the Aftermath of the Catastrophe

The seventh edition of the Yokohama Triennale explores the intense interplay of toxicity and care in a post-apocalyptic world, states Arshiya Mansoor Lokhandwala.

- Arshiya Mansoor Lokhandwala

It is rather uncanny that Afterglow, the seventh edition of the Yokohama Triennale, Japan, curated by Raqs Media Collective, seems like a doomsday prophecy, not unlike the current Covid-19 pandemic scenario. Afterglow was one of the few major art events to take place this year after a spate of cancelled exhibitions, a challenging feat of co-ordination between India-based Artist Directors – Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Jeebesh Bagchi who form the Raqs Media Collective – and artists across the world and an on-site team in Japan. The exhibition sprawled over three venues – Yokohama Museum of Art, PLOT 48 and NYK Maritime Museum – and included works by 67 artists from all over the world. The exhibition went on for 80 days from the 17th of July to the 11th of October, and could be experienced in person as well as online.

Afterglow, defined as a luminance or a sensation of glowing light possibly after a nuclear explosion,1 which can only be experienced and not seen by the naked eye, was carefully considered by the curators keeping in mind the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. The curatorial approach was outlined in a