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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

23 January 2020

Eyes of minds. Eyes of hearts. Jogappo 조각보

These eyes are of minds. Of hearts.
Eyes to see what can not to be seen
Eyes to witness injustice
Eyes to feel sufferings of others
Eyes to send prayers
Together


Nyingjey སྙིང་རྗེ་  means 'compassionate empathy'.  I feel your pain. I am here with you.  These eyes are eyes of Nyingjey.   A beautiful Tibetan word that I live with. 


This piece was made for the exhibition in Gwangju, Korea in 2019.  The theme of the exhibition was about Gwangju people's democratic uprising in 1980, which lead to massacre of students and civilians.  In 2018 when a group of friends from Gwangju taught me about the incident and took me to the old cemetery where courageous souls buried,  my heart was shaken like the time I first saw the image of a self immolating monk in 2012.

I was inspired by a traditional patch work in Korea called Jogappo조각
보.
Because not only I had known about and loved this form of Korean craft since I was a young girl but also this form of craft by accumulations of stitching struck me as a metaphor of people lives being together.  In every day life or in the struggle for dignity and freedom. 



20 January 2020

Together-ness (in progress)



While flipping old journals, I found a slogan by Tibetans in exile for a protest. I must have noted it down after being in one protest.
It struck my heart quietly, remembering memories of sharing sadness and being together with Tibetan friends during my long stay in Dharamsala in 2012.

མ་ཆགས་མ་ཆགས།
སེམས་ཤུགས་མ་ཆགས།
Ma chak ma chak 
Sem chuk
Namyang
Ma chak

Don’t give up
Courage
Never
Give up

Since towards the end of the last year,  I have been painting these blue figures. A phrase 'together, we feel together'  was on my mind during painting with blue.
I was thinking of countless humans who stood up for their freedom to be beaten up, arrested and murdered in many places in 2019 up till now.
Countless humans who are in prison and tortured.
Countless humans, whose basic rights to live with their cultural and social identities are denied and captured in detention. 
Countless women who were and are victims of sex slavery during wars and conflicts, whose dignity, hearts and bodies were broken into pieces.
Countless suffering.

Often the sense of overwhelmingness and helplessness dominate. 
What we can do with our small hands seem to be so limited.

The only thing I can do is to draw these.  To feel them.

Together - ness - to feel pain, to share, to heal, to grow, without any border between you and me.
A wounded tender heart is the strongest, the most courageous and the most compassionate that would never give up to heal and reach out to other hearts.  Hundreds, thousands of tender hearts are even stronger.  There must be a way that we can change how the world is.

Instead of shouting the slogan, we recite one another like a song of clear water and soft breeze.

不要放棄
勇氣

永不放棄

포기하지 마세요
용기
절다 포기하지 마세요.

諦めないで
勇気をもって
決して諦めないで



note: This caption, too, is still in progress. I am catching words.



12 January 2020

Remember Tenpa Darjey and Chimey Palden March 30 2012

For Tenpa Darjey, 22 yrs old and Chimey Palden, 21 yrs old, who set themselves on fire on March 30 2012  in Barkham, Ngaba, Amdo, Tibet.

They, both monks from Tsodun Kirti Monastery in Barkham, together carried out a protest in front of the prefectural government offices and were taken to the hospital.

Chimey Palden was declared dead on the next day of their self-immolation protest.
Tenpa Darjey passed away on April 7 at a hospital in Ngaba area.

Their bodies were cremated by the Chinese authorities and ashes and remains were handed over to their families after,  despite of fervent requests of their families and the monastery to return their bodies.

March 30, their protest day, happened to be the same day when Jamphel Yeshe's body was carried to  and cremated in Dharamsala after his self immolation protest in New Delhi.

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=31194&t=1