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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 May 2020

Guennam-Ro Blues 2019 for beloved women, feeling May Gwangju 1980

May is a sad month for many people in Gwangju. 
In May 1980,  students and civilians stood up for calling for a democratic reform against the dictatorship government that lead to the infamous Gwangju massacre.  

In this May,  in the far away land,  I think of women whom I spent a part of my every day life while in Gwangju last year around the Geunnam-Ro ( Ro means a big street in Hanguel), where major protests occurred.  Civilians, students, bus drivers in the buses, trucks, taxis all together marched on this street and shot to ground.  Women at the public bath, women who run small eateries, who were all kind to me, a foreigner who is from the country which had given so much sufferings to their people for decades up till now.  And a statue of a young woman.  A girl. 

One of the most experiences that engraved in my heart was seeing a newly built memorial statue of a ‘comfort woman,’ depicted as a young girl, in Geumnam-Ro Park. I encountered it in 2019 upon my second visit. Such statues are installed in many locations in Korea and abroad, serving as a symbol of remembrance and protest by Korean citizens against the Japanese occupation.  On my way to the host gallery and studio space I was working in, I passed by this statue daily.  The everyday encounter with the statue, time spent with hearty women at the public bath across the street from the park, and working on drawings became my regular routine during my residency.  

“Women and conflicts” permeated the experience and I left Korea that summer with feelings of pain and sorrow.

May is a beautiful season in Gwangju.  Full of green leaves.  Green grass.  Green Mudeun mountain. 
Yet many hearts' hidden wounds start remembering that time when green leaves get softly brown in wind.  

Just after two short visits, my heart aches. Many faces come into my mind.  
The amount of sadness in those who experienced that time is beyond my imagination. 

 I can only pray for the true peace, freedom and healing will prevail in this land and in the world.