info

Towards the last two months of my last visit to India in the spring of 2012, I encountered the Tibetan community in exile in India experiencing painful news of their people self-immolating in fire one after another in China-occupied Tibet. My experiences in the past visits in India (drawing a cremation site in Varanasi, documenting fire pits, cremation alters, and contemplating on life and death around fire) synchronized with this particular movement, an extreme way of ‘offering’ their bodies to ‘fire’ for asking freedom and peace.I could not help drawing large and small drawings as emotional response and with a sense of mourning.

After coming back to Vancouver, the self-immolation kept happening and I felt that my personal and professional task is not finished.

I have come back to India to continue to document and draw under the same theme. tomoyoihaya@hotmail.com

8 November 2019

Blue Protesters in Gwangju 1980 are still walking.


I see brutal pictures of victims injured by excessive violence of police force almost everyday on social media. My heart aches.

These blue spirits of protesters are drawn for the animated video 'City of Light', which was produced this year with theme of the well known democratic movement that happened in Gwangju, Republic of Korea in 1980.  Many students and civilians lost their lives while standing up for their rights of freedom and democracy.

I overlap these blue sprits with fellow humans who are standing up for their own rights at this moment.  I also thought of fellow humans who died or imprisoned in the past.

The situation that violates human rights happening all over the world.  Human realm seems to have lost sanity.  When we need more sustainability, empathy and co-existing,  a strong force of greed and power seems to keep abusing other human beings and exploiting the whole world.

What can we, who are on the safer side, do to stop this? 

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
-Paul Gauguin