Safety Zone
John Young explores cross cultural humanitarianism in his exhibition ‘Safety Zone’, held at the University of Queensland Art Museum. ‘Safety Zone’ revisits the Nanjing Massacre in Jiangsu, China, in which the city was seized by Japanese Imperial forces on the 13 December 1937. The exhibition engages incidents that occurred moments prior to the massacre. Young’s exhibition retells the story of the creation of a safety zone, by the twenty-one foreigners living in Nanjing at the time, to protect some 250,000 Chinese citizens from invading Japanese forces. Led by German businessman John Rabe and American missionary Minnie Vautrin, the creation of the safety zone was a courageous act of resistance that saved many lives. Humanity in the face of tragedy is sensitively portrayed by Young in an exploration of acts of courage and self-sacrifice. Young’s ‘Safety Zone’ re-assembles this little known humanitarian event.
In the first exhibition space, a storyboard of sombre memories and unimaginably horrific accounts, highlights the considerable ability of art to educate us and to confront, alter and transform our perspective. The sixty chalk drawings and digital prints include photographs, documents and firsthand accounts that reflect the humanity existing beneath such tragedy. Young’s attention to the forgotten humanitarian aspect of the Nanjing Massacre creates a compelling new perspective on the typical historical account. This perspective is interlaced with the victim’s memories, told via statistics, stories and photographic evidence displayed on each of the prints that are created to look like school blackboards. The contrast between the confronting real-life descriptions of victims and the resilience of the human spirit is overwhelming. Forgotten stories of the two leaders of the safety zone, John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, are intricately woven