Recovering Lives Through Art: Hidden Histories and Commemoration in the Works of Katsushige Nakahashi and Dadang Christanto

Abstract

This essay is a reflection on the work of two contemporary artists: Japanese artist Katsushige Nakahashi and Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto. Both artists explore issues of history, memory and the commemoration of past lives. Nakahashi has focussed on the subject of the Pacific war (1941–45) and Japan's defeat in that war. The art of Dadang Christanto is dedicated to human rights abuses in every time and place but is also about Indonesia and very specifically about the killings in that nation in 1965–66 and events in Indonesia and East Timor in the 1980s and 1990s. Indonesian art grew out of the struggle for independence and over the last decades of the twentieth century was highly engaged with issues of social justice—but Christanto is one of the very few artists to allude to these specific events. Japanese contemporary artists by contrast have been seen as disengaged from social and political issues and Nakahashi is one of the few in that nation in recent years to raise the traumatic issue of Japan's wartime defeat. For both artists dialogue with audiences is an essential part of their work. This essay is concerned also with analysing the ways artists communicate and engage with those audiences.