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| Tomoyo Ihaya -Vancouver based artist |
Connections. You feel it in the depths of your being when you least expect it. Like unexpected breeze on a still dark night.
It’s exciting and comforting. But its familiarity is nameless. Connections are a mystery.You feel connected to a person. You feel connected to a place. You feel connected to a cause. You know the ‘connection’ moves you beyond your own boundaries, out of your comfort zone; it makes you do things you wouldn't dream of doing. But,you don’t know why. You feel strangely familiar in the new. But the familiarity is nameless. It cannot be elucidated.
If you ask artist Tomoyo Ihaya (www.tomoyoihaya.blogspot.in) why she feels drawn to the Tibetan cause, she will answer your query. But it is an answer that she is still searching for in its entirety. I met this Vancouver-based artist of Japanese origin at *1 Shanthi Road just a few hours before the opening of her show Drawings from Dharamshala.
‘Delicate-porcelain’ was my first impression of the artist. Just like her drawings on Japanese paper –almost ethereal, pristine and small in size. But in reality there’s nothing delicate about the artist or her art.
Each of the 77 drawings and paintings exhibited represented a Tibetan who self-immolated for the cause of Tibet. Each drawing was accompanied by a note. Neatly penciled on it, almost with reverence, were the name and a brief background of the person who had crossed-over to the other side.
Each drawing represented a sacrifice.
Tomoyo was overwhelmed by the immolation and, didn't know how to deal with the grief began to draw her heart-scriptions. “It was the only way I could deal with the sorrow of each of these self-immolations,” Tomoyo said.
Why is a woman who was born in Japan and who now lives in Canada moved by the Tibetans in India? “I don’t know,” she confesses.
Tomoyo first came to India in 2005. She was part of a group that went to Ladak for meditation. That is where she met a Tibetan guide. He invited her to his home in Delhi. That was the beginning of Tomoyo’s association with the Tibetan community who has been living in exile in India from 1959. Dharamshala in Northern India has the largest settlement of Tibetan community.
Tomoyo has visited India 14 times in the last 8 years. “Every time I leave India I tell myself that this is going to be my last visit,” she says, “but the minute I reach home in Canada I start thinking about my next trip to India.”
To the naked eye, Tomoyo’s drawings are simple. To the discerning eyes, they are profound. They are squiggles and wavy lines from afar. But up close, they strike with their unconcealed pathos of life. Just like the Tibetans and their cause.
The Tibetans might seem a fragile community -gentle, kind, even timid and Buddhists. But in reality they are a community with a quite strength and resolve. They possess the kind of force that can shake the earth under your feet –maybe not immediately, but definitely.
In the last one year there have been 122 self-immolations. Young Tibetans burning themselves up for the cause of Tibet –a land that they must’ve only heard about from their grand parents who fled Tibet to India.
It is to these people and this invisible land that Tomoyo feels a connection. A connection that draws her time and again to their cause. A connection that makes her shed copious tears every time she hears or reads about a Tibetan immolation.
A connection that makes her draw her sorrows in Japanese paper and burn holes in it using Japanese incense sticks. A connection that she tries to understand through her art.
A connection that makes her an artist-in-search. A connection that is familiar, yet nameless.
On the day she is able to label her ‘connection’ will be the day she will stop searching.
It will also be the day she will stop drawing the Drawings from Dharamshala –delicate lines that tell the story of a people who sacrificed their lives for a land that they never saw.
* 1.Shanthiroad Art Space is an informal space in Bangalore for the visual arts, creative collaborations, and new media experimentation and cross-cultural interaction among artists. www.1shanthiroad.com/
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