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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

24 January 2022

Tree of Life


At this moment,  there are people who struggle to live.  
There are people who live in extreme pain. 

Those who stood up to defend freedom but in vain. 
Those who escaped their homelands to find refuges but in vain. 
Those who live under the threats of bombing and no food, water, and shelters. 
Those whose rights to speak their language and to believe their belief are taken. 

They live far away.  How do I reach out to them?  Praying is not enough, I know. 

I live in rather safe territory where there is no immediate threat to live.  
Daily flood of human right abuses, arrests, violence and refuge crises is overwhelming. 

Recently I find it painful to draw feeling pain of fellow beings.  
But my pain in process of drawing their sufferings is no comparison with their pains. 



A memory of being in Luang Prabang came up. 
An old capital in Laos on the shore of Mekong River where I spent some time more than 20 years ago. 
The mosaic mural of Tree of Life at Wat Xieng thong was my refuge.  
I used to walk up to the hill where the temple stood and would look up the mural often in owe. 

I drew the tree wishing this tree grows in every being in struggle and give them new lands and new lives.