A Tale of Hidden Histories

The works on display shed light on the history of conflict zones, those places in the world where truth and fiction are brought into sharp focus. Broomberg & Chanarin, Omer Fast, Chia-Wei Hsu and Meiro Koizumi look at the representation of war. Can a war be recounted? Is it possible to depict a war? And what is the role of the artist in this regard? These questions act as catalysts for various stories, many of them unknown or forgotten, events that happened in World War II and the Cold War, as well as more recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Omer Fast

Contemporary trauma and war are key ingredients in the politically charged films of Omer Fast. Born in Israel in 1972, Fast is interested in the tension between reality and fiction, and he investigates the construction of stories, in particular the way they change when told from different perspectives. In Continuity (2012), a couple are reunited with their son after his military deployment to Afghanistan, but the awkward story soon becomes more complicated. The background to Her Face Was Covered is the evidence of a drone pilot who discusses the bombing of a convoy of trucks at an unspecified location.

Chia-Wei Hsu

Taiwanese artist Chia-Wei Hsu (b. 1983) examines the cultural history and geopolitics of Asia. He tells forgotten stories as a way of investigating Asian history, important aspects of which are myths and legends. In Huai Mo Village (2012), a priest recalls the time he spied for the CIA to undermine the Chinese communists. In Drones, Frosted Bats and the Testimony of the Deceased (2017), former factory workers reminisce about World War II to images of an abandoned fuel factory in Taiwan, filmed from a drone.

Meiro Koizumi

Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi (b. 1976) uses his confrontational videos to break down deep-seated taboos and tackle difficult issues within Japanese society. His consistent body of work centres on recurring subjects such as individual and collective memory, Japanese attitudes to the past, Japanese media culture, and the depiction of ultimate Japanese heroes such as the samurai and the kamikaze. Defect in Vision (2011) and Portrait of a Young Samurai (2009) offer a disturbing picture of these combatants. The traumas and memories of American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the subject of Koizumi’s recent work Battlelands (2018).