On March 11, 2011, an earthquake-triggered tsunami caused the meltdown of three reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, leading to mass evacuations, environmental contamination and the planet’s most devastating nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Cleanup of a 12-mile “exclusion zone” around the plant is expected to take decades, but last January the area was reopened on a limited basis.

In that devastated urban landscape, movement artist Eiko Otake and Japanese historian and photographer William Johnston saw an ideal stage.

“This is an area that’s been cordoned off because of radioactivity, where literally they can’t touch objects on the ground, where homes were abandoned, families had to leave,” said Daisy McConnell, director and curator of the Galleries of Contemporary Art of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. “It’s a big tragedy and it’s also something Eiko and Johnston had a very hard time with because they know the legacy of the nuclear industry in Japan, the only country ever bombed with a nuclear weapon.”

Eiko Otake rose to prominence in the 1970s alongside her partner and spouse, Takashi Koma Otake, as part of the Japanese performance duo Eiko & Koma, whose surreal works blend movements, unexpected sounds and bold visuals to evoke a powerful audience response.

Eiko Otake was at work on her first solo project, “A Body in Places,” a series of performances in which she places herself in public venues such as train stations, when she joined up with Johnston, a professor at Harvard University with whom she’d collaborated in the past, for two trips to Japan in January and July last year.

“Eiko danced her remorse, her anger, her bitterness, her sadness at this tragedy that really could have been prevented had Japan not had nuclear power on their coastline there,” McConnell said.

As they traveled through the decimated landscape, Johnston captured those performances in images for the exhibit “A Body in Fukushima,” on display at GOCA121 through Feb. 14.

“They’re very moving, very haunting images because the background is this destroyed landscape and homes. There are bags that hold one ton of radioactive dirt. They look like body bags laying down and it’s chilling,” McConnell said. Johnston’s photos of Otake in abandoned stations as they followed the train line to the coast offer a stark contrast to the region’s bustling past, as well as Otake’s performance works in crowded stations in the West.

“Japan is a very populated country and the fact that these stations are now abandoned, in many places overgrown with vines, was very difficult for both of the artists to handle,” McConnell said. “For both of the artists, it was a way to call attention to what has happened, create art out of something that’s so devastating and tragic, and give hope for change for the future.”

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Noon-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday through Feb. 14, GOCA121, Plaza of the Rockies, 121 S. Tejon St., Suite 100; 255-3504, uccs.edu/~goca

Stephanie Earls, The Gazette, 636-0364,stephanie.earls@gazettedev.gazette.com