St. Mary’s Square
Chinatown
From the moment of installation of this statue by Carmel artist Steven Whyte it has been controversial.
The plaque that accompanies the statue reads: This monument bears witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of women and girls, euphemistically called “Comfort Women”, who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces in thirteen Asia-Pacific countries from 1931 to 1945. Most of these women died during their wartime captivity. This dark history was hidden for decades until the 1990s when the survivors courageously broke their silence. They helped move the world to declare that sexual violence as a strategy of war is a crime agains humanity for which governments must be held accountable.
The statue was a gift of the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition to the City of San Francisco.
According to a November 24, 2017 Newsweek article: San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee announced the endorsement of the statue at a city council meeting on Wednesday, despite Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura’s warnings about the possibility of the statue being given a permanent home in the city. Yoshimura will begin severing the ties between the two locales, which have been “sister cities” since 1957, and aims to completely separate from San Francisco by the end of the year.
Steven Whyte was born in 1969 in the United Kingdom and grew up in various parts of Europe.
Whyte, a dyslexic, has been described as first using art as a social solution, rather than a potential vocation: “Art class was often the only place I felt confident that I could contribute and learn at the same rate as my peers.” As an undergraduate, he became the youngest student accepted to the Sir Henry Doulton School of Sculpture.
After leaving school, Whyte obtained a teaching position at Stafford College, then became the youngest member of the London-based Society of Portrait Sculptors, where he served as Vice-President alongside President Franta Belsky PPRBS, late sculptor to the Royal Family.
In 2003, Whyte opened his first US open studio and gallery on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. In 2007, the Steven Whyte Sculpture Studio and Gallery moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
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Here is a clip of the sculptor describing how he came about this particular iteration.