The artists in Disruptive Landscapes challenge these authoritarian understandings of the landscape, instead suggesting more diverse social and cultural viewpoints and fresh ontologies, or deliberations on the nature of being. Often employing temporal, spatial and cultural distance to reveal differences, they offer slow, contemplative works that enable us to consider alternative ideologies: critiquing the political infrastructures that define or control landscapes, casting environments with subterranean narratives, and suggesting that there are a myriad of perspectives on our connections with nature.

Artist Watanabe Shiori has previously made works about Tokyo’s Imperial Palace and gardens, creating a dynamic system of weeds, water and aquatic life that she took from the moat separating the residence of the Emperor of Japan from the city that surrounds it. The pair of works in Disruptive Landscapes expand from this symbolic Imperial setting to show how biodiversity is explicitly linked to nationalism. Blue is based on the proceedings of the National Diet (legislature of Japan) and the Invasive Alien Species Act (2004). Presented using an automated voice, the story traces the strange fate of the bluegill fish, which was first introduced to Japan in 1960 as a gift from the mayor of Chicago to celebrate 100 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The fish quickly adapted and colonised Japan’s freshwater ecosystems, endangering native species. Bluegill is now designated as an invasive species, and ‘non-native fish boxes’ have been set up on the banks of lakes across the country into which people are encouraged to discard the fish. Watanabe’s use of real and fictional scenes interspersed with political debate reveals Japan’s view of nature, where reality and myth go hand in hand. The accompanying video work Red examines what Japan as a nation defines as ‘nature’ by overlaying the proceedings of the Diet on Japan’s Species Conservation Act (1992) to show the ways in which nationalism protects and eliminates natural creatures in order to create the nation’s ‘ideal ecosystem’.

Political interference within natural environments underpins the work of photographer Shiga Leiko, whose work focuses on the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima disaster and the political ramifications of the rebuild. Made for the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award, in the two-channel video work When that Night Leads (2023) Shiga reinterprets the restoration projects that were undertaken after the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear accident, evoking the human experience and impact. As the protagonist walks along a newly constructed sea wall that artificially separates land from sea, a voiceover explains some of the tensions around these projects. Shiga experienced the tsunami from her home in the eastern area of Ishinomaki and centres her practice on engaging with her local community, drawing out the hypocrisies of post-3.11 Japan. Seen in the context of Ōtautahi Christchurch, which also suffered a major earthquake in 2011, When that Night Leads both resonates and contrasts with our local conditions. Here, governmental influence on the rebuild has had ongoing repercussions in the prioritisation of major infrastructure projects over community-led initiatives, the aggressive deconstruction of the central city, and the flight of some investors. Shiga’s work prompts us to reflect on our response to disasters from the recent and more distant past. When the ground was ruptured in Ōtautahi, so too were our social structures. We had the potential to build back better, so did we?

 Individual freedoms and the right to have control over one’s own body are the basis of the work Flos Pavonis (2021) by Momose Aya. In this beautifully shot, slow-moving video Momose has used the traditional correspondence format of Japanese diary films to share an exchange about abortion rights between two fictional characters – a Japanese woman named Aya and Natalia, a female activist living in Poland. The conversation between the women includes a description of the plant flos pavonis, or peacock flower, which was used to induce abortion by enslaved Africans in the colonial Caribbean, but is generally considered decorative. This natural solution is hidden in plain sight, only known by some as a medicinal treatment. The work opens up a discussion on sex, intimacy, identity and freedom, and highlights the extent to which the female body is still under the control of authoritarian power.

Queer readings and experiences of the landscape, particularly in the southern islands of Okinawa, a region with a complex historical relationship to the United States, are explored in the work of Miyagi Futoshi. The two works presented in Disruptive Landscapes are part of Miyagi’s American Boyfriend project, and were made a decade apart. The Ocean View Resort (2013) is based on the artist’s personal memories and the history and politics of Okinawa. Voiced by Miyagi in English, the story begins with the narrator returning to the remote island where he grew up and reuniting with his friend Y, with whom he was in love during his teenage years. As they walk along the beach, Y talks about incidents from the Pacific War, such as the massacre of residents by Japanese soldiers immediately after the war and the guerrilla fighting that unfolded when the American forces landed. The narration then shifts to a Japanese prisoner of war, relating his experience of sharing a moment of intimacy with an American soldier as they listened to a Beethoven string quartet on different sides of the prison camp fence. Lastly, Miyagi describes his own memories of riding home at night on the back of Y’s bicycle. It is romantic and poignant. Miyagi has returned to this work in Variations on the Theme of (The Ocean View Resort) (2025), reframing his memories with the distance of time and maturity. He brings new readings to the earlier circumstance, this time spoken in Japanese instead of English. Subtle differences are deployed across these two versions, teasing out how time, place, language and lived experience shift our inner thoughts and feelings on events. In this way Miyagi reflects not only on his own identity but also on gender, sexuality, and the problematic nature of postwar Okinawa.

Another artist addressing regional specificity in Japan is Mayunkiki, who belongs to the Ainu people indigenous to northern Japan. Mayunkiki explores what it means to be Ainu today, celebrating unique aspects of Ainu culture, language and customs through her participation in musical groups Marewrew and Apetunpe, while also confronting stereotypes and ideals. Mayunkiki’s work in this exhibition consists of two filmed conversations: one with Korean Japanese photographer Kim Sajik where they talk about the process of relearning a language that might have been one’s mother tongue; and then a second made with art translator Kanoko Tamura discussing what it means to decide the language one speaks. Tired of being characterised according to animism, ecology and diversity, Mayunkiki asserts independent freedom to rethink cultural belonging.

In Your Moon (2020), Watanabe Atsushi invited people who are isolated or identify as hikikomori, those who have withdrawn from society, to submit a photograph of the moon as they saw it. Brought together into a giant lightbox made up of a myriad of photos taken from many different angles and moments, it serves as a marker of community – a shared yet slightly shifting perspective of what we look up to in the sky each night. Made immediately after the COVID-19 state of emergency was declared in April 2020, the project attracted a broad range of people, including those with physical disabilities, single mothers and bereaved family members of people who had committed suicide. Your Moon is part of a series entitled The Day We Saw the Same Moon, and creates a sense of solidarity while also respecting the sense of loneliness for each of us.

Koizumi Meiro’s virtual reality project, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer (2023) offers the ability to experience another mindset or perspective. This work is the final chapter of his Prometheus Trilogy (2019–23), and uses the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the heavens and bestowed it upon humanity, to explore the tension between humans, nature and technology. The story is told in a whispered poetic tone and describes how humans could become entirely different beings through a small bio-technological operation. Using VR technology, Koizumi makes the out- lines of the viewer’s body blur with the work, an overlaying of hands for example, creating a feeling that one is living among a collective body. When the bodies and knowledge of the human race are altered by genetic engineering, what kind of emotions will the ‘new human’ feel, and how will they reconstruct their relationship with nature? Using this query as a departure point, Koizumi creates a neo-futuristic mythology.

As Japanese curator and writer Kamakura Haruko ex- plains in her essay ‘Japan circa 1970, Landscape and Chile’, Jinushi Maiko’s work A Distant Duet questions the social and political circumstances in Japan through a story from Chilean-born writer Roberto Bolaño. Comparing different cultural perspectives or responses to someone falling into a hole in the ground, Jinushi made this work after the Great East Japan Earthquake as a way to cope with the difficult political climate of that moment and also the complex histories of Japan. It is a thoughtful work, a way of working through the particular relationships we have with those in power, our histories and each other. The hole is a multilayered metaphor: what do we bury, what do we dig up, and how do we proceed in the face of danger?

There are many similarities between the geographical landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand and Japan, which both rely heavily on the stunning beauty of the land and its resources. National identity, trade and tourism are driven by the dramatic mountains and coastlines, and by farming and agriculture. Yet, both also have complicated colonial and imperial histories. The works in Disruptive Landscapes traverse time, place and politics, seeking out various forms of distance as an opportunity for comparison and reflection. Presenting this range of nuanced works from Japan in Aotearoa is a way of sharpening our questioning around our accepted norms, politics, ideals and hypocrisies, through gentle and astute examples of other ways to see, shape and construct our idea of landscape.