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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

2 May 2020

For Women - in Blue ( in progress)

For Women - I started writing.  I read stories of the women ( Ama - Grandmothers in Chinese) who were victims of the forced sexual slavery during Japanese military's occupation in Taiwan. 

A degree of feeling is too intense to express. 

'Without women' no ' threads of lives'
yet 
women are too often  'exploited' and carry 'deep wounds'

'permeates through threads of histories'

All the women in the past and present I met in different countries last year.
Sharing open heartedness and tears.  Their sorrows that came out touched in a deep place in my achy heart.

Histories of women in conflicts, women who were wounded because they were women.

'empathy' 'reconciliation' 'compassion'

What to be women. 

Since last summer,  I have used only blue in my drawings.

Blue heals.