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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 Jogappo조각보.
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.