Artist gives 'comfort women' voice

"Comfort women", who had long been silenced and their brutal experiences ignored, have a new voice at an art installation in Memphis, Tennessee.

Themed See Me, Hear Me, I Am Human, the exhibition shows around 30 pieces of work by artist Jin Powell, including life-sized cast, mixed-media and ink paintings.

"I am using my work to bring to light the plight of the few known surviving comfort women so that they will no longer need to hide their stories and be ashamed or silent anymore," Powell said.

During the war between 1931 and 1945 (also known outside China as the Asia-Pacific War), hundreds of thousands of women and girls were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces in 13 Asian-Pacific countries, mostly China and Korea. They are euphemistically called "comfort women".

"Most survivors were shamed into silence, treated as war collaborators, never allowed to tell their stories, and never given atonement. As a female Chinese artist, these stories are deeply personal to me," Powell said.

"What can I do for them?" she asked herself. "If I can give an exhibition outside of Asia, more people will have a chance to learn about this history," she said.

At her exhibition, which runs through March 9 at ANF Architects, an architect and design firm in Memphis, the most popular work is 10 pieces of life-sized cast hung from the ceiling.

Nine of them are covered with survivors' names in black ink calligraphy. The artist said she left one blank for those many nameless ones. And they are headless because those women and girls were incomplete for their whole life, she said.

Graduated from China's Central Academy of Fine Art in 1985, Powell was trained as a sculptor. When she arrived in Memphis in 1995 she opened a casting and fabrication studio with her husband John Powell. Her bronze bas-relief, which celebrates voting rights for minority men, is part of the permanent collection of Tennessee's State Capitol Building in Nashville.

"I consider the portrait as the first expression and hands as the second expression," she said.

The mixed media works on display at the exhibition were intended to be portraits of "comfort women". "But I found that's not enough to send the message," she said.

Then she carved wood hands for the portraits. "They are reaching out their hands to ask for help and ask to be seen and heard," she said.

The portraits were drawn in charcoal from photos of real "comfort women", Powell said, adding she was so upset after reading about "comfort women" that she often cried while drawing and painting.

Her emotions and feeling were echoed by her audience. She said the word she heard most of the time from her visitors was "moving".

"From the deeply furrowed lines on their faces, for the Chinese women, more than age showed Jin Powell gives voice to the Comfort Women. They are seen. They are heard. They are human. And they are not forgotten," Kathy Busler, a visitor wrote in her comment.

Like most of the people around her, Powell said she had little knowledge of "comfort women" until in 2015, when she came across the book Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves and then came into contact with its author Peipei Qiu.

She has since become involved with "comfort women" organizations. "I hope my work will help empower other women around the world to talk about women's dignity."

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com