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The headless man, the raped woman hiding her face in shame, the girl's face aging overnight in the horror of Nanjing's nightmare winter. These were the scenes from Southeast China, nearly 66 years ago.
"In all her life, she couldn't be young again," said painter Queelan Foo-Kune.
The Chinese-origin British painter, talked about one of the works in her exhibition: "The Rape of Nanking (namely Nanjing): The Forgotten Holocaust," which opened Wednesday in Bruce Castle Museum, north London.
A total of 26 oil paintings and two art installations created by Foo-Kune, in four years of hard work, are on display at the exhibition, which runs through March 30.
More than 300,000 Chinese civilians and captured soldiers were tortured and murdered within six weeks from December 13, 1937, when the Japanese army swept into China's ancient capital of Nanjing.
The death toll exceeded that of the 1945 atomic blasts in two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Astoundingly, there has been a continuous denial by Japan of the massacre, and a worldwide lack of awareness about this event. Consequently, it is also known as "the forgotten holocaust."
"My work is not about violence ... it is about a rooted, cynical, deliberate and inhumanely administered horror," said Foo-Kune.
"My art in this context is to wake up and to tell the world that if we do not take any notice of the massacre in Nanjing it will be a massacre recommitted."
Foo-Kune designed one of the exhibition rooms into something resembling a Chinese memorial place: black textiles hang on each side of a wall, with a huge painting hung upside down in the center.
Before the painting stands an incense burner containing more than a dozen slim, red Chinese incense sticks.
Foo-Kune named this piece of her work, "Sea of Eyes", and said the Chinese eyes represent the number of people who died during the six weeks, and that their eyes screamed while they died. She hung the work upside down because "at the time the whole world was upside down before these eyes."
In another oil painting titled "Was Blue", the onrushing river runs by mountains high, but the water is blood red.
The painting "refers to the Yangtze River and lakes in Nanking which literally turned red with blood during the massacre", Foo-Kune explains.
"One historian has estimated that ?their (the dead of Nanjing Massacre) blood would weigh 1,200 tons and their bodies would fill 2,500 railroad cars. Stacked on top of each other, their bodies would reach the height of a 74-storey building," she said.
She was citing a paragraph from Iris Chang's influential book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II", published by Penguin in 1997.
"The Nanjing Massacre is just not properly remembered. I want as many people as possible to know it. If we don't know it, how can we forget it?" she asked.
"The most important thing is that the Japanese government must admit the event and give the Nanjing Massacre survivors compensation."
Foo-Kune "feels strongly about this project and has invested a lot of her time and energy since its inception," said Peter Cross, a spokesman for London Arts, the exhibition's sponsor.
"It is hoped The Rape of Nanking will give audiences a vivid and relevant message about the horrors of war," he said.
"This exhibition has come at a time when the world faces increasing uncertainty over fear of global conflict ... it truly demonstrates how powerful and effective the visual arts can be in drawing attention to horrific historical events," said Dana Captainino, a spokeswoman for show organizer, Haringey Arts Council.
Foo-Kune's late parents were from Guangdong, southern China, but Foo-Kune was born in Mauritius. She came to Britain more than 25 years ago and first studied fine arts at St. Martin's College, London before moving to Yorkshire, in northern England.
She also gained an MA in Visual Arts from London Guildhall University. Foo-Kune currently lives in London and has had her works on show at Cabot Hall, Canary Wharf, Sotheby and the October Gallery.
(Xinhua News Agency March 6, 2003)
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