Hilda Hellstrom

My work is based on the notion of the myth or the story that inhabits an object. These are tools that help us understand our reality, in the same way that we might understand parts of our history through a piece of the Berlin Wall. In my research, I learnt about the last man still living in the evacuated zone by the Daiji power plants in Fukushima, Japan. 


I decided to go there and for four days I documented his day-to-day life. In an attempt to make use of the wasteland, which due to radiation has become useless, we collected soil from his rice fields to create symbols, reflecting the situation inside the zone. From this soil, I have made a series of food containers, which are as useless for their purpose as the land and the farmers of Fukushima.