With the cycle "Black Rain", I refer to the famous novel of the same name, which was written by Masuji Ibuse in 1965 and filmed by Shōhei Imamura in 1989. A special form of radioactive fallout is the so-called black rain, which is mainly associated with the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The energy released when a nuclear weapon is detonated vaporises everything in its vicinity and ignites further away. The resulting ash, smoke, upturned dust and water vapour mix with the radioactive residues, which are also sublimated radioactive remnants of the weapon to form a radioactive cloud, which cools as it rises and finally rains down. This radioactive rain is black due to the high ash content. Radioactive fallout can, at very high doses, lead to acute and usually lethal radiation sickness, or in the longer term, with smaller but adequate doses, to leukaemia and cancer.
During World War II, many Japanese - including my grandmother - had to collect pine resin, wood or roots in the forest. The pine oil was used to make fuel for aircraft. In the work "Roots" I draw with white oil paint lines on a dark black ink-painted background, neon-lit root formations that may have absorbed the "black rain". At the same time, this work points to the scarcity of resources in Japan, which was one of the reasons for Japan's entry into World War I and II - and in general of the imperialist aims of my homeland with the associated atrocities my countrymen have done - and finally for the construction of the numerous nuclear power plants in Japan under pressure from the USA. Last but not least, it also plays into the fundamental question of why - the roots, so to speak - of the atomic bombs (especially the 2nd one!)...
