Betsy A. Kawamura

Betsy Anne Kawamura,  born in USA and of Japanese descent, is not only a human rights advocate platforming the 'voices' of minority women affected by gender-based-violence and displacement, but is also a visual-artist and former professional dancer.  She has resided and exhibited in Norway, Central Europe, Japan, USA, and has been commissioned to do photography and portraiture. Her collectors include Mrs. Loret Miller Ruppe, former US Ambassador to Norway, McKinsey & Co.(Norway), soloist from the Norwegian Opera Ballet, as well as other private and corporate clients.  Her subjects for portraiture include dancers from the American Ballet Theatre and models. She received a Merit Award for photography from Columbia University at The Women's Art Show in San Francisco 1995; and a grant from Norwegian Foundation of Culture and Arts for one-person show in Oslo, Norway (1992). Furthermore, Kawamura apprenticed with the Honolulu City Ballet, performed with the San Francisco Ballet, and later on in performance art circuits in San Francisco.  Her symbolist portraiture style of subjects emphasizes darker sensuality and beauty as divine tools of spirituality for transcendence. She draws from the work of Symbolists such as Moreau, Klimt, Redon and Knopff of "Les Vingt". 


More recently, she has programmed multi-media projects on Invisible Impact of War on Women (was in discussion with Nobel Peace Center, Oslo). Kawamura is a member of the International Network for Museums of Peace, contributes to Nobel Women's Initiatives and other distinguished organizations and will receive an 'Emerging Market Hero' award by Capital Finance Magazine in spring, 2013. She is currently planning 'Eyes of Free North Korea', a muliti-media collective effort amongst supporting NGOs, media agencies and North Korean diaspora sharing their narratives in visual form. As a survivor of gender-based violence herself, the theme of divine 'Beauty' is recurrent in her work to remind diaspora  women and men who endured human-trafficking and other forms of torture of their inner beauty and spiritual power. Please see here for a preliminary concept of the art exhibition!

 

 

 

Model: Lori Nitahara, Honolulu, Hawaii

 

Model: Lori Nitahara, Honolulu, Hawaii 

 

Model: Lori Nitahara, Honolulu, Hawaii

 

Model: Lori Nitahara, Honolulu, Hawaii 

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