ART AS MEMORY

the Comfort Woman Statue

During World War II, the Japanese invading armies forced Korean women into camps as sex slaves.  The humiliation and abuse they endured were beyond imagining.  Called “Comfort Women,” the women who survived were shunned by their communities and families after the war and lived out their lives in shame as permanent outcasts. 

The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery  by Japan was formed in the early 1990s and began what became called the Wednesday Demonstrations. After nearly 20 years, at a Wednesday Demonstration in 2011, Yeongiong Kim proposed a work of art subsequently built by Unseong Kim and Seogyeong Kim.  A 51 inch tall statue of a Comfort woman - a girl wearing a simple blouse and skirt with short hair and folded hands in her lap sitting in a straight backed chair -  was installed in front of the Japanese Embassy in South Korea. 

In 2015, Japan paid $8.3 million in reparations to be divided among the still-living 46 women.  

(Korean women were put into sexual service again in the South/North Korean conflict when the country was invaded by U.S. and United Nations servicemen.  The South Korean government is suing both U.S. and U.N. forces for a total of $1.2 million in reparations.  The klinker in this deal is that the South Korean government cooperated with the prostitution.  The women were taught english, given courses in etiquette and regularly tested and treated for sexually transmitted diseases by their own government.)

The Council for Women requires a formal apology from Japan to put the sordid history to rest but that hasn’t come.  Instead, the art piece named the Statue of Peace remains in place outside the Japanese Embassy. An irate Japan has pulled out of economic talks with south Korea in counter protest.   

Comfort Woman statues have now been installed in cities where there are large populations of Korean immigrants -   one is in Bergen Co., New Jersey, another is in Glendale, California - and have become a symbol of war abused women worldwide.

Neither the U.S. nor the U.N. has responded to the Council for Women or the South Korean activists charges.

High School Art, banned by U.S. Congress

Meanwhile for any of my blog readers who also are Facebook friends, you know from my posts this week about the brouhaha in Congress over a high school senior’s painting - one of 435 pieces selected competitively from teen art works nationwide and given the honor of hanging for one year in a congressional hallway.  The young artist who painted the controversial piece lives in St. Louis and painted a street scene where chaos, mayhem, violence and racism reign.  Two central police figures are depicted with animal heads as they appear to shoot an unarmed black … a wolf in human clothes? …while another police officer (white) looks to be pulling a black male back and into safety. 

If left alone probably no one would ever have noticed this painting….after all, one painting hanging among 435 is hard to put into the limelight unless you happen to be a proud parent or grandparent in which case, you will imagine your art genius at center stage.

But a congressman intent on having his 15 minutes of fame on FOX News, pulled the painting off the wall and announced that it was anti-police, Black-Lives-Matter propaganda. The painting hit the big time - national 6 o’clock news. Within hours, the Republican led Congress proclaimed that the painting would be removed permanently.

I am sick. As an adult, instead of casting this painting as a portrait of disrespect, I feel humiliation and rage that a teen living in my country confronts this neighborhood every day.  His viewpoint is unique and valid and if the point of art is to show the human condition, he has hit the sad reality smack in the face for many urban children.

Comfort Women=war casualties. Urban black children=war casualties. Art can point the finger, can make us squirm on the hot seat of our conscious and I can only hope that it can play a role in bringing about …not revenge but a bit of justice - maybe monetary reparation along with a heartfelt apology.