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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

11 October 2023

Lights on the Earth

 

                                                                                                        copyright Tomoyo Ihaya 2023


Deeply saddened to hear yet another violence started. 

Babies, children, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandmothers.

Animals, birds and insects.

Flowers, plants and trees, those trees of wisdom

So many lives exploded in a second by a weapon created by human and operated by somebody's hand.


Who created those weapons? Who are making money on war?  Who are crying?


Civilians, who must have wished peaceful resolutions, freedom, and just a normal happy life at 'home' under the sky and the stars, lose their lives in flash.  

Please give safe passages and refuges for them, without taking their lives. 

                                                                                                copyright  tomoyo ihaya 2023