myanmar contemporary art

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Myanmar Contemporary Art -- Is There Such a Thing? Jacquelyn Suter  This article was first published in Asia Art Archive, December 2006. http://www.aa a.org.hk/newsletter_detai l.aspx?newsletter_id=6 6&newslettertype=archi ve It is reprinted here (2012) in a slightly altered form. An exhibition of contemporary art from Myanmar, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2006, was entitled “You Think You Know Us?” Gold Leaf, the organizer of this exhibition, deliberately chose this title as a provocation to the generally accepted notion that art from such an isolated country and, by extension, a more traditional culture could not be very ‘contemporary’ at all. The exhibition was an eye-opener to thos e who held this view and, needless to say, the exhibition itself easily laid that notion to rest. As curator, I found other compelling is sues emerging: How curators and writers routinely and uncritically use terms such as ‘traditional’, ‘contemporary,’ and ‘cutting edge,’ as if we all shared a common understanding, and also as if the art work fell very cleanly into these cat egories. And perhaps more pertinent for Myanmar, how common perception of a country’s political environment (open or repressive) often dictates our preconceptions of what that country’s artistic production will be like. At the present time, two persistent sticking points arise in any discussion of Myanmar contemporary art: traditional subject matter and censorship. In a curious way, the issue of traditionalism is the more complex, and the issue of art production in a censorious regime is the more easily explained. Unless it has an edge to it… Every country has a pocket of art which looks back to simpler and, by mythic transformation, better ti mes. The United States/N ew England tableaus of N orman

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Myanmar Contemporary Art -- Is There Such a Thing?

Jacquelyn Suter

This article was first published in Asia Art Archive, December 2006.http://www.aaa.org.hk/newsletter_detail.aspx?newsletter_id=66&newslettertype=archiveIt is reprinted here (2012) in a slightly altered form.

An exhibition of contemporary art from Myanmar, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2006,was entitled “You Think You Know Us?” Gold Leaf, the organizer of this exhibition,deliberately chose this title as a provocation to the generally accepted notion that art

from such an isolated country and, by extension, a more traditional culture could not bevery ‘contemporary’ at all. The exhibition was an eye-opener to those who held this viewand, needless to say, the exhibition itself easily laid that notion to rest.

As curator, I found other compelling issues emerging: How curators and writersroutinely and uncritically use terms such as ‘traditional’, ‘contemporary,’ and ‘cuttingedge,’ as if we all shared a common understanding, and also as if the art work fell verycleanly into these categories. And perhaps more pertinent for Myanmar, how commonperception of a country’s political environment (open or repressive) often dictates our preconceptions of what that country’s artistic production will be like.

At the present time, two persistent sticking points arise in any discussion of Myanmar

contemporary art: traditional subject matter and censorship. In a curious way, the issueof traditionalism is the more complex, and the issue of art production in a censoriousregime is the more easily explained.

Unless it has an edge to it…

Every country has a pocket of art which looks back to simpler and, by mythictransformation, better times. The United States/New England tableaus of Norman

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Rockwell, and their numerous derivatives in shopping malls, attest to this situation. Thepopularity of these paintings exist simultaneously with the contemporary American artscene, albeit in parallel universes. Representational, nostalgic subject matter, however,do not define American art, nor any other major art center around the world. However,its fascination for a certain segment of the population continues unabated.

A provocative article in ARTnews , <1> assessing Andrew Wyeth’s work on the heels of his first retrospective in thirty years, lends some insight into how traditional subjectmatter is now assessed. In the article, Wyeth was vilified and hotly defended in turn:Linda Ferber noted that “there is an interesting sense of dislocation in Wyeth’sworks....There is no pictorial resolution.” But in comparing Wyeth to Edward Hopper,independent curator Dave Hickey remarks, “Hopper is a hundred times better” citing “hiscinematic cropping, his emotional plunge.”

It would seem from the various comments -- now pro, now con – that Wyeth is placed, or not, within the contemporary art canon to the extent that his work conforms to what wenow define as ‘contemporary’ or ‘post-modern’. For example, Wyeth’s lack of pictorialresolution is an asset; Hopper’s cinematic cropping is even more of an asset. In either case, both comments come from post-modern criteria.

This set of critical exchanges on Wyeth bare the theoretical underpinnings of how anevaluation of a particular category of work is made – and re-evaluated constantly as artproduction creates new dimensions for comparison. If the back and forth remarks aboutWyeth can be taken as the critical norm, it would seem that traditional subject matter,realistically figured needs to have an edge to it to gain proper admittance to thecontemporary canon.

At a recent visit to the Singapore Art Museum, I viewed a work by the Malaysian painter and art theoretician, Redza Piyadasa. The painting has a text as part of the work: art works never exist in time, they have ‘entry points’. Thus, the ‘entry point’ for Wyeth,

viewed now from a post-modernist position in time, allows/forces us to re-evaluate hisvisual language in comparison with other works, such as Hopper’s, which more closelymatch current thinking about how a contemporary work should read.

What does all this have to do with Myanmar contemporary art? At this time, traditionalsubject matter, realistically figured or romantically impressionistic, is a large part of theart production of the country; however, it is by no means all. Because of this fact, manygalleries too often believe that sentimental and/or formulaic scenes are the only art styleMyanmar has to offer. At least one would think so from what is presented. But theacceptability of traditional subject matter depends very much on how its visual languageis constructed and, thus, read.

The ‘whacking great cheroot’

Myanmar contemporary art encompasses traditional formats in various ways. The mostobvious and, unfortunately, ubiquitous are the paintings to be found in the marketplaceand in many galleries in Yangon, depicting the traditionally attired ethnic woman, monkwith umbrella, or quaint bullock cart. This category of work appeals to the tourist whowants a souvenir of ‘Old Burma’ – sentimental, typecast, and comfortable. Work of thistype is similar worldwide.

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Sai Thet Htwe Zaw WinPhoto courtesy of Insight Art Gallery Photo courtesy of Insight Art Gallery

Another type of traditional work has, if not an ‘edge’, a bit of cleverness about it. Whilethe souvenir work described above would not be seriously considered for a gallery

purporting to house contemporary art, a hybrid form of work has crept in the back door of some galleries. In the best of this category, traditional subject matter (for example,colorful monks or Buddha heads) are rendered in a somewhat commercial styleconforming to the iconography of ‘modernism:’ gold-encrusted patterning or simplifiedpictorial space and, in some, unusual perspective and close-up composition. Theseworks combine a sentimental touch of ‘Old Burma’ in the subject matter with aninternational modernist style that goes well with décor.

Min Wae Aung Photo courtesy of New Treasure Art Gallery

It must be admitted that the technical skills of the painters in this genre are not small andthat, in many instances, the works are quite dramatic. Their value in the marketplace isalso not inconsiderable. However, as the art critic Robert Storr said about Wyeth, “as a

whole [they] have the same set of rules. They have no insight, no daring.” And tocomplicate this situation even more, once a Burmese artist finds the correct marketableformula, other artists rush to copy the same subject matter and style, thereby renderingone artist’s work almost indistinguishable from the other.

One of the issues arising from this type of art – blatantly sentimental on the one hand,panderingly formulaic on the other— is that they all share an aura of exoticism.Producing exotic subject matter for western buyers is not new in Myanmar. It first beganat the end of the 19 th century with the British colonization of Burma. As early as the

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1890’s, postcards of ‘Burmese Beauties’ or minority women smoking ‘whacking greatcheroots’ as the British dubbed them were manufactured for foreign and localconsumption. <2> As the scholarship of Edward Said has so convincinglydemonstrated, casting a people into an exotic dimension distances their reality and,consequently, their concerns.

A space of transgression

Fortunately, there is another category of work containing traditional subject matter thatsurprises, delights, and challenges the viewer in ways that one would not suspect. Let’stake the example of one of Myanmar’s most well-known artists to illustrate traditionalsubject matter executed in contemporary formats.

It must first be said that a great deal of Myanmar contemporary art leans decidedlytowards the aesthetic, and Nay Myo Say is one of the artists who defines the course of this leaning. Never painting solely abstraction; always depicting traditional subjectmatter (devoid of cloying sentiment), his work can be described as incredibly beautiful(outstanding coloration and composition) with dramatic perspective, and all this workedinto a pictorial space of mixed media. As if that were not enough to hold our interest,there are also questions of spectatorship and cultural reading within some of his visualtexts.

In 2005, Nay Myo Say constructed a series of works entitled Natri Puja, a Pali phrasemeaning ‘to worship the Buddha with art.’ In this series of works, the artist combines thebeguiling movement of a traditional Myanmar dancer within the same pictorial space asa Buddha from the Ananda Temple in Bagan. It is interesting that a Burmese artistwould choose this theme, because worshipping the Buddha with dancing is not atradition in Southeast Asia. However, worshipping the divinities with dance is a well-established one in India. There is an intriguing bit of confluence here, since we are toldby archeologists that the temples of the golden age of Bagan (11 th -13 th c.) were highly

influenced by eastern Indian temple architecture.

The Natri Puja series combines an Ananda Buddha with a dancer, linking the two withinthe space by a gaze between them. Given the fact that these two figures are never seenanywhere else represented within the same space, it is a bit of a shock to see this doneand, further, to have the two looking at each other.

Nay Myo Say Photo courtesy of Gold Leaf

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From a western perspective, the Myanmar dancer’s positions can be read as quitesensual. This, coupled with the fact that in many of the works, the dancer is lookingworshipfully at the Buddha. Again, from a western perspective, a thin sliver of meaningmay separate a ‘worshipful’ gaze from a ‘sensual’ one. And the Buddha is looking ather, or in her direction, with a conventional fixed stare or, more dramatically, with eyesunconventionally slanted in her direction. Upon seeing these paintings for the first time, Iimmediately felt a tension in the pictorial space, and attributed this feeling to being in aspace of transgression. This is clearly my reading; not the artist’s intention. <3>

I would say that my reading is a Piyadasa ‘entry point’ from a position of culturaldifference – one imbued with familiarity with gender issues and the ‘gaze’ as a carrier of desire. This reading bespeaks of post-modern knowledge from a most definite westernperspective with which the artist is entirely unconversant.

Nay Myo Say’s Natri Puja series demonstrates that paintings with traditional subjectmatter, as one element of a work, are most definitely no hindrance to creating complexworks that do indeed extend the boundaries of art with verve, panache, and interestinginterpretations. And…that this is being done in Myanmar today. It is this type of work,among others, that is not being seen enough by international audiences nor beingrecognized for its innovation by the art community.Up to you…

One might say that the next challenge for the Myanmar artist, working at the boundary of tradition and contemporaneity, would be to now move from conventional subject matter into areas that speak of the current social environment. Obvious comparisons presentthemselves in the works coming from China, Thailand, and Indonesia – full of commentary about how people are faring in a world of rapidly increasing change.

But because of the military regime’s governance of Myanmar, censorship is a starkreality. For those artists who desire public exhibition within the country, the gauntlet of

bureaucratic approval-seeking is prohibitive, only to have one’s innocuous nude rejectedat the end of the process. As a result, this path is not taken. Instead, what can beeuphemistically termed ‘social commentary’ works are held in private galleries to aninvitation-only audience. Not surprisingly, the most direct political expression is inperformance work in these small, safe spaces. A performance piece is an intangible;there’s no evidence once it’s completed. A painting holds more threat; it can beconfiscated and the artist prosecuted.

That having been said, Myanmar artists are courageously going as far as they feel it’ssafe in expressing themselves. The various ways are ingenious and fascinating to see:from works with veiled multiple meanings, to satiric and humorous works with a diffuseaim, to works with a totally private and hidden meaning.

One of Myanmar’s most creative artists, Phyu Mon, is an example of one who createsusing multiple meanings. A performance artist also working in art-based photography, ina recent series of works entitled Hope , the other Born to Run , she expresses severallevels of meaning using a predominantly Surrealist approach. The images in theseseries can be read as personal statements on restriction vs. freedom: as a woman in atraditional society, as political statements, or yet again as an concept of Buddhistphilosophy.

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Phyu MonPhoto courtesy of Gold Leaf

Another approach is satire and outright humor, refreshingly evident in a number of works

whose elliptical references are relatively safe, because non-specific to Myanmar. If onewere to ask regarding a work, “what does it mean?” the artist would likely respond bysmiling coyly and saying, “up to you.”

TitoPhoto courtesy of artist

Then there is the work that has a very Myanmar-specific political commentary, but sowell hidden that the unsuspecting viewer would never guess the meaning. I am referringto a painting the message of which revolves around events during the people’s 1988 and2007 uprisings in Myanmar. In many demonstrations, monks took the lead, turning their traditional black lacquer begging bowls upside down refusing to accept rice. Thisgesture is a grave insult to whomever would like to make offering/merit. Because thisact was done during public demonstrations, one can assume that the insult was directed

at the military government.The style of the painting in question is the very height of elegance, a semi-abstract blacksphere in design, with no apparent message at all. And yet, this political theme is thevery motivation for the work.

To protect the identity of the artist, a photo cannot be reproduced here. In this way, thearm of censorship reaches not only the artist but also the writer as well and, by

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extension, the reader. Censorship is one way of isolating Myanmar artists from their colleagues worldwide, preventing them from the unhindered exchange of new ideas.

Unfortunately, another form of restriction has befallen the Myanmar art community in theform of global politics. In 2003, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bi-annual art show prohibited Myanmar from participating in competition for awards. Thisimportant regional event was sponsored by the American company, Philip Morris.Because no definitive public information had been forthcoming from Philip Morris as toexactly why Myanmar artists were barred from competition, it was widely assumed byartists within Myanmar that it was done in support of the United States government’sadditional sanctions on the country in 2003.

Philip Morris dropped Myanmar after the 2002 competition, in which a Myanmar artist, UAung Myint, was selected for one of the Jurors’ Choice Awards. From today’sperspective, it is more than ironic to restate the words of the Regional Director of thePhilip Morris Multinational Corporation: “This year’s occasion is indeed remarkable,because the Myanmar artists have achieved success in the very first competition theyhave been eligible to enter. I hope they will win prizes in the years to come too.” <4>

As a result, the only major region-wide art competition available to the Myanmar artist isthe prestigious Sovereign Asian Art Prize, held annually with a first prize of US$25,000.In the Sovereign’s first Asian competition in 2004, four Myanmar artists were selected for the 30 finalist group. Since that year, only two Myanmar artists have reached finaliststatus (in 2008 and 2009).

Is it possible?

There is no doubt that Myanmar artists have the visual language skills and anabundance of creativity to now move into more innovative expression using a diverserange of media. To use China as a counterpoint, when was the last time a

contemporary Chinese artist presented a sentimental tableau from rural Yunnan as aserious piece of art at a major gallery or exhibition?

Is it possible that as more doors begin to open for Myanmar artists – as they now are –that they can begin, in turn, to open more challenge for themselves? In a reversal of Robert Storr’s remark about Wyeth, we would wish for more Myanmar artists to “haveinsight, have daring,” as some of the more outstanding ones are now doing.

And, it is equally important for exhibition venues, art periodicals, and critics to participatein and support this daring, by highlighting the most innovative and vibrant work that is atthe forefront of the Myanmar art scene today.

Notes:

1. Deidre Stein Greben, “Wyeth’s World,” ARTnews, October 2005. Online atwww.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1904 [cannot access 2012].

2. Noel F. Singer, Old Rangoon, Kiscadale Publications, Scotland, 1995.

3. In conversation with the artist in Yangon, October 2005.

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4. Quoted in The Myanmar Times , May 27-June 2, 2002. [No online accessavailable].

5. Quoted in The Myanmar Times , May 27-June 2, 2002. [No online accessavailable].

Jacquelyn Suter is the founder of Gold Leaf, a project to bring the best contemporary art fromMyanmar to international awareness. She was also one of the official nominators for the country of Myanmar for the 2007 Sovereign Asian Art Prize.www.goldleafmyanmar.com

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