Okabe Masao. Frottage as appropriation. From Hiroshima to Fukushima

Abstract

This research takes an analytical look at the work of the artist Okabe Masao, from the perspective proposed by the anthropologist Alfred Gell, and his anthropological theory of art, which is projected in art from the network of links that are established around the work and her production. In order to approach it from this theory, it is necessary to resort to methodologies such as biographical, sociological, historicist, philological and phenomenological, which will allow us to analyse the contexts on the basis of all kinds of sources, and also taking into account the phenomenon with the experiences narrated by the different subjects. In Okabe's case, the community is intertwined through frottage with its fellow citizens, with the past in the present, in order to launch its memory into the future. In this context, the technique of frottage, because of its immediacy and the direct contact it facilitates with that which serves as its matrix, plays the role of a tool of appropriation. Because of its significance, we will use the works that the artist has made around and with the communities of Hiroshima and Fukushima, two cities that have suffered from nuclear radiation.