Disasters often deprive the victims of their own narratives to seal their experience off to survive in the aftermath of the incidents; Consequently, people forcefully displaced due to disasters often suffer from loss and confusion of identity. They need a safe environment to face the past and the present to reconstruct their lives, which requires them to recommit to their identities established by their background which were destroyed by these incidents. In this process, they have no choice but to transform their identity, to reconnect themselves to their new environment, which can be promoted not by getting back their narratives but by developing new ones that are properly connected to their past.

​

I arrived in Melbourne in 2013 as an evacuee from the Fukushima nuclear accident. Since starting my research in 2017, I firstly recognised I hadn’t digest my experience of the disaster at all and I needed to face myself to go forward. However, it was difficult to extract what I have been experiencing.

​

The ‘Just Keep Going’ series was originally developed as an installation to create a safe environment and encouragement for self-reflection for the public in a globalised, technological world. It proved to be a healing process for myself by revealing what happened to me. Afterwords, it encouraged me to start sharing a new narrative, which, ultimately, resulted in transforming my practice toward a gentle activism for the right to live in a ‘safe’ place as an environmental refugee.