BURMA: A Celebration of Life through the Arts under the Junta

• Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar (chiang mai, thailand)
• Wednesday, December 16, 2009
• Inter Press Service

So what happens when the vibrant artistic community in the country seeks to express itself through such contemporary forms as performance art is common. Expect a visit from the censors to check content. In August, one show in Rangoon, the former capital, had such a visit.

The officials from the ministry of information’s censorship board frown on topics like politics and anti-junta sentiments in the military-ruled country — and sex. The August show had little such content. The nine artists performed hours before the show formally opened and the censors moved on.

Such limits in the South-east Asian nation have compelled the spreading crop of contemporary painters to look elsewhere for inspiration and to respond to their times. Instead of anger and political rage, canvases tend to celebrate the vibrant colour, distinct motifs and modern interpretations of Burma.

Nay Myo Say’s solo exhibition that opened early this month in the northern Thai city offers a window into such artistic sensibilities. The universal image of pain and suffering that the world has come to identify with Burma — thanks to the international media and the country’s pro-democracy movement — is nowhere in sight in the 21 canvases that adorn the walls at the Suvannabhumi Art Gallery, the only one in Thailand dedicated to Burmese art.

The 42-year-old Burma-based painter has returned to the female form, a favourite of his, for this third solo exhibition at the Chiang Mai gallery that runs from Dec. 4 to 25. His oils explore women from the past. Their faces convey serenity and grace.

The larger canvases are a modern-day meditation of aristocratic ladies from 'ancient days.' Their gentle black brushstrokes and fluid outlines highlight details against a splash of bright yellows and orange.

On the smaller canvases, the former medical doctor’s depiction of virgins is distinct by the gold combs on their head and hairstyles shaped like a bird’s tail behind the ears.

The canvases resonate with Nay Myo Say’s interpretation of his country’s rich Buddhist traditions. The first painting in this series, ‘Women of the Ancient Day’, has such a detail in gold that adorns the top of the canvas. They hark to the Burmese practice of pasting gold leaf paper on the Buddha statues in the country’s main temples.

Elsewhere, horizontal slabs of gold etched with ancient Buddhist religious text in deep red contrast against the images of his female subjects. This style of highlighting certain corners of his canvas, which Nay Myo Say has done before, conveys, at times, a secular touch. A painting of a woman blending into deep blue and green tropical floral motifs with gold patches of colour seeping through reflects that touch.

Nay Myo Say’s choice of non-political themes is in itself a reflection of a little-explored side of Burma.

Since the mid-1990s, which marked his arrival as an artist, the trends and stark contradictions that have unfolded in Burma were characterised, on one hand, by political themes dominating the arts and mass media, focusing on a junta spreading its stranglehold on power, crushing the fledgling pro- democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who has spent over 14 of the last 20 years in detention.

On the other side is the country’s image of 'opening up' the economy — albeit still a myth to many — in the 1990s after decades of isolationism and stringent socialist policies since the military grabbed power in a 1962 coup.

It is this apparent change of scene after the drab decades of Burmese socialism that Nay Myo Say, one of the highly acclaimed artists of the country’s 'third wave' of painters, has rooted himself in.

The artist and his contemporaries belong to a movement that is described 'not as angry rebellion; it is a celebration of opportunity,' writes Andrew Ranard, who has lived in Burma, in his book ‘Burmese Painting’. '(Their art is) full of joyful, colourful outbursts.'

Such celebration of Burmese themes was conveyed a year ago during Nay Myo Say’s second solo exhibition at the Suvannabhumi gallery. Then he chose to interpret a form of traditional Burmese theatre called ‘Anyein’ (translated as ‘tenderness’ in Burmese). That exhibition displayed male and female dancers painted in black lines, reminiscent of the expressionists, set against mural backdrops.

'There is no clue or message in my paintings,' Nay Myo Say said at the time to ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs magazine published by Burmese journalists living in this northern Thai city. 'I want to convey serenity and peace, something of the feeling I experience when I enter the old temples and pagodas in Pagan,' a major historical site in Burma, otherwise known as Myanmar.

It is a sentiment — serenity and peace — that has been marked in his other paintings, ranging from his landscapes to watercolours, still a popular medium of art in the country.

'This is a side of Burma artists inside the country want to show the world, now that they have more opportunity to exhibit in foreign countries,' says Burmese gallery owner Mar Mar. 'We have at least seven exhibitions a year.'

Little wonder why one Burmese art critic has remarked that the modern paintings of Burma’s third generation of artists like Nay Myo Say ensures the country’s greater presence in the international art world — amid censorship and the junta’s diktats.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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