Zwe Mon, Untitled, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 36” x 48” BC2019.03.05
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This exhibition on the evolving portrayal of Burmese women as depicted today by Myanmar artists reflects a politico-cultural milieu in transition between tradition and modernity. After some fifty years under military rule, extreme censorship, and isolation, Burma —also called Myanmar— a vibrant artistic scene has emerged welcoming a new era under the leadership of an iconic womanly figure; Daw Aung San Suu Kyi: current State Counselor of Myanmar, and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Each of these paintings offers differing views of the female body which challenge the conventional representation of women within the context of traditional Burmese society. Through varying depictions of women, this exhibition examines how the feminist concept of the “male gaze” — whereby the image or perception of women taken as an object— is reflected in works created by mostly male artists, contrasts to how female artists give us another reading of their bodies, dress, and bearing. From the feminine portrait, embellished with Buddhist symbols, of a traditional Burmese woman expressively touching her long hair; or the three “robotic” female figures from Look at Us; to the rural view of women within Living in Harmony chatting near the well in an imaginary landscape; or to the most unexpected Soft in Line associated with tags, cartoons and nudity unimagined and unseen of prior to 2010, the paintings in this exhibit attest to the rapid changes occurring in the country which opened its doors to radical modernity only during the past two decades. |
In this section, Burmese women are portrayed...
Traditionally, in a rural setting inserted to a daily life activity of chatting near a well in an undisturbed peaceful landscape along the Irrawaddy river of millennial-past central Burma: such as Ba Khine’s Living in Harmony; or Myo Nyunt Khin’s Dancers: positioned before an elaborate pastiched background encompassing dozens of familiar Burmese icons, floral and faunal or a female guardian spirit figure
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Ba KhineLiving in Harmony
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As conveyed by the title of this painting, “Living in Harmony” illustrates a peaceful scene along the Irrawaddy riverbank: women draw water from the communal well, bullocks pull carts in the rice fields, with country boats and now engine-driven watercraft plying their routes: activities everywhere seen today along that essential, majestic waterway rising from edge of Tibet and transiting through Upper Burma thence downstream to its great delta on the Bay of Bengal. On the far horizon among the blue hills are small white Buddhist pagodas erected toward merit-making for the dead; evoking for us the religion still dominating the country.
The chosen calming colors and the horizontal lines express the pleasantries of traditional life in rural areas, a form of life which might be at risk of soon disappearing. The verticality of the palm trees complements the horizontality of a traditional landscape with a palette evoking the stages of paddy field cultivation.
Before turning to painting traditional scenery in a semi-abstract style, Ba Khine worked for twenty years as a professional photographer: heightening and underscoring high expertise in composition and coloration.
The chosen calming colors and the horizontal lines express the pleasantries of traditional life in rural areas, a form of life which might be at risk of soon disappearing. The verticality of the palm trees complements the horizontality of a traditional landscape with a palette evoking the stages of paddy field cultivation.
Before turning to painting traditional scenery in a semi-abstract style, Ba Khine worked for twenty years as a professional photographer: heightening and underscoring high expertise in composition and coloration.
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Myo Nyunt KhinDancers
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This joyful pair of female performer presents here an animated traditional dance of the Myai Way era. The closed interaction of their movement is expressed by the sinuous silhouettes, sheathed from head to toe in traditional colorful courtly costumes; the womanly graces manifested by the lead dancer is recognizable by the hair bun; the sinuous flying white scarves; the long-sleeved jackets covering her upper bodies from shoulder to hip, emphasizing gracious waistlines; the lovely white extensions at the bottom of both of their beautiful silk longyis suggesting fluid movement.
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The background is entirely comprised of highly-detailed, mandala-like icons. Looking closely, each is varied in color and pattern representing ancestral geometric designs or animated animal figures: parts of the thousand-year repertoire of Burmese art: the lucky owl; the rabbit, Burmese symbol for the moon; the peacock, associated with the sun, but also more recently emblemizing political movement against the military regime; the ogre bilu: empowered to ward off the evil.
When interviewed, Myo Nyunt Khin —celebrated for traditionally-derived iconography in a characteristic pastel palette, as in homage to a millennium of Burmese art and architecture— said “he most wanted to represent love”. |
In this section, Burmese women are portrayed...
In an urban setting, where portraits of Burmese feminine beauty are somewhat differently defined in Saw Star’s Look at Us; Min Zaw’s Ordinary People; or Zwe Mon’s Untitled, the only female artist expressing her engaging female gaze with long hair and traditional Burmese features such as using the natural cosmetic thanaka on one’s cheeks; and calligraphic letters sa, da, ba, wa placed in each corner and within the graphic design referring to Buddhism
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Saw StarLook at Us
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This painting plays with notions of Burmese traditional feminine beauty, a female’s modern existence, vanity, or exploring female emotions veiled behind inscrutable faces. Look at Us, portray three young women as revealed by their Burmese hairstyle (yaung pay soo) which varied as they grow to adolescence. Here part of their hair is raised in a bun, due to the fact long hair is considered in Burma the “glory of women”, while as a young adult the remaining hair is a short bob cut with a thick bang. Their three faces have different skin tones and are covered with the clear yellowish Burmese cosmetic paste called thanaka on their cheeks. A soothing paste ground from sandalwood (thanaka); its popularity —as a sunscreen and fragrant medicinal ointment, as well as beautifying concoction— goes back some two thousand years. The large eyes, which rise to the fore and stare outward with such steadfast intensity, can play on one’s imagination, prompting thoughts of silent fear, internal resilience, spiritual weariness, quiet, thoughtfulness, longing or sadness, or blank vacancy. What are they staring at? Are they silently bearing witness, what are they seeing? How are they responding?
The exquisite touches of jewelry sparkling in the women’s hair reminds us that Saw Star is a jewelry maker himself. They also conjure thoughts of Burmese stories where a woman’s haircomb has significance as a great sentimental possession.
Saw Star created a number of works featuring women whose faces are stretched to fill the canvas and styled with long noses and tiny mouth reminiscent of a Modigliani.
The exquisite touches of jewelry sparkling in the women’s hair reminds us that Saw Star is a jewelry maker himself. They also conjure thoughts of Burmese stories where a woman’s haircomb has significance as a great sentimental possession.
Saw Star created a number of works featuring women whose faces are stretched to fill the canvas and styled with long noses and tiny mouth reminiscent of a Modigliani.
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Min ZawOrdinary People
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The composition for this painting is intriguingly static and yet animated; the women seemingly reserved, inscrutable and at the same time modest, kind, alert, and intelligent. They wear the sheer blouse eingyi over their traditional lace bodice (zar bawli); and the native longyi, a traditional garment wrapped around the waist and tied. In a country that long experienced colonial invasion and occupation, the very act of dressing with a longyi could well represent a passive form of resistance. At the same time —inherited in part from that aspect of the colonial era— this is one of the most popular traditional garments that continue to be worn today for its practical comfort and beauty.
Like Saw Star’s Look at us, this painting presents a layered nuance of possible meanings. The artist is commenting on the resilience of “ordinary people” during the half century of dictatorship meanwhile celebrate their true power and beauty. The subdued nature of the ladies’ facial expressions softened by their strikingly sweet lips, delicate brows, and gentle hand gestures is appealing, yet the eyes stare straight out at us in an insistent manner. The artist has talked about the faces of ordinary people looking robotic and blank because of the fear felt during the Military regime from 1962 to 2012.
Like Saw Star’s Look at us, this painting presents a layered nuance of possible meanings. The artist is commenting on the resilience of “ordinary people” during the half century of dictatorship meanwhile celebrate their true power and beauty. The subdued nature of the ladies’ facial expressions softened by their strikingly sweet lips, delicate brows, and gentle hand gestures is appealing, yet the eyes stare straight out at us in an insistent manner. The artist has talked about the faces of ordinary people looking robotic and blank because of the fear felt during the Military regime from 1962 to 2012.
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Zwe MonUntitled
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It is a self-portrait dressed as a Burmese woman wearing a traditional blouse eingyi with on her cheeks daubed with thanaka —the soothing and protective odorant paste made from the bark of a sandalwood— with red lipstick. Her long hair is properly combed and maintained by an elastic band and decorated by green flowers. Moreover, this painting is composed only with the Burmese traditional senses, symbols, and styles in order to underline the fact that this painting was created by a Burmese artist. The eyes are modeled on the pa ya pite which is the classical rendering of how to design eyes, in accordance with over a millennium of classical wall paintings in Buddhist temples.
During our interview, she mentioned the significance of the use of colors. e.g., “the red background to represent courageous Burmese women”, Also the meaning of the various letters of the Burmese alphabet sa, da, ba, wa distributed at each corner of the canvas to convey protection. They are placed, as well, at the center of the symbolic unalome: an iconic spiral design found either on the foreheads of Buddha images. or more specifically used in tattooage: as a reference associated to Buddhism “conveying a sense of infinity”.
Zwe Mong wanted to underline tradition, elegance and power of Burmese women.
During our interview, she mentioned the significance of the use of colors. e.g., “the red background to represent courageous Burmese women”, Also the meaning of the various letters of the Burmese alphabet sa, da, ba, wa distributed at each corner of the canvas to convey protection. They are placed, as well, at the center of the symbolic unalome: an iconic spiral design found either on the foreheads of Buddha images. or more specifically used in tattooage: as a reference associated to Buddhism “conveying a sense of infinity”.
Zwe Mong wanted to underline tradition, elegance and power of Burmese women.
In this section, Burmese women are portrayed...
As politically engaged, as in Zwe Yan Naing’s Never Forget —using a collage of demonetized, withdrawn banknotes— in illustrating iconic political figure of Aung San Suu Kyi, and remembering both the long struggle for freedom and the student uprising in 1988 or Myint San Myint’s Protest voicing the revolt of villagers facing the coming of a Chinese Mining company depriving them from their lands.
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Zwe Yan NaingNever Forget
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This interesting combination comprising of background collage of demonetized and de-circulated banknotes with the unusual 75 kyat denomination, atop which the artist painted in red “Never Forget 88” and in the left foreground the representation of a woman dressed as a Burmese modern lady, indeed bears several layers of meaning. Although he was only four years old when the major student uprising took place in 1988 —killing and injuring thousands of students, with many survivors feeling to neighboring countries— this event marked the rising star of Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of Bogyoke Aung San, the “Father of the Nation who was himself assassinated while she was still an infant. This painting presents her as the emerging leader of the National League of Democracy (founded in 1988).
Semi-ironically —as they displayed the portrait of Bogyoke Aung San— the 75 kyat banknotes were issued in 1985 to celebrate Burma dictator General Ne Win’s 75th birthday, but were suddenly invalidated and totally devalued two years later in 1987 leading to widespread bankruptcies amongst that part of the population that held them as cash currency rather than as bank balances.
Since 2011, Zwe Yan Naing is especially well-known for his numerous “currency collages” with displaying historical figures. He sees his art as a conduit for reminding the youngest generation not to forget their country’s past heroes, and their legacy to press for more freedom.
Semi-ironically —as they displayed the portrait of Bogyoke Aung San— the 75 kyat banknotes were issued in 1985 to celebrate Burma dictator General Ne Win’s 75th birthday, but were suddenly invalidated and totally devalued two years later in 1987 leading to widespread bankruptcies amongst that part of the population that held them as cash currency rather than as bank balances.
Since 2011, Zwe Yan Naing is especially well-known for his numerous “currency collages” with displaying historical figures. He sees his art as a conduit for reminding the youngest generation not to forget their country’s past heroes, and their legacy to press for more freedom.
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Myint San MyintProtest
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This painting refers to the “Letpadaung Copper Mine” protests against the Chinese mining operation that was initiated following agreements made with the Burmese government. Villagers of Letpadaung accused Wenbao Mining of unfair land confiscations, inadequate compensation, ruined farmlands, and harm to the health of children. The latter half of 2012 witnessed new violence as protestors and rights groups were joined by a surge in villagers and monks. The huge demonstrations forced the Burmese government to reconsider such copper mining concessions allocated to the Chinese.
This small painting created with silkscreen technique, becomes more raw and intense with the knowledge that the artist was responding to contemporary political developments that had just occurred and were not yet resolved. This is not a romantic, nostalgic view or idealization of women’s power, but a memorializing of a very real fight against injustice. Armed with a famous iconic portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi —who was then not yet elected/appointed as State Counsellor— the determination and anger of a woman villager is forcibly symbolized by her raised fist, while her face is turned into a ghostly frieze, repeated faintly across the background, plus four reversed image of her protesting form, as silkscreened in ghostly white fills the air as a stunning visual representation of protesting energy and sounds.
This small painting created with silkscreen technique, becomes more raw and intense with the knowledge that the artist was responding to contemporary political developments that had just occurred and were not yet resolved. This is not a romantic, nostalgic view or idealization of women’s power, but a memorializing of a very real fight against injustice. Armed with a famous iconic portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi —who was then not yet elected/appointed as State Counsellor— the determination and anger of a woman villager is forcibly symbolized by her raised fist, while her face is turned into a ghostly frieze, repeated faintly across the background, plus four reversed image of her protesting form, as silkscreened in ghostly white fills the air as a stunning visual representation of protesting energy and sounds.
In this section, Burmese women are portrayed...
As objects of desire like in Hein Thit’s Soft in Line, and Bogalay Kyaw Htoo’s Signs; where the artists used not only the sign language visible with the wrist on the top of the umbrellas but where both artists also expressed the sexualized representation of the body.
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Hein ThitSoft in Line
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Soft in line, which reflects a fascination for the female body, plays with abstract expressionist flourishes —while utilizing elements of pop culture in the bits of printed comics and graffiti-like sprays of pigment; and ample quantities of red— makes a bold statement favoring artistic and expressive freedom. The artist describes his passion for the female form as something that started when a friend poet studying medicine showed him a book on female genitalia. He said he became “quite overwhelmed by the beauty, nature, dream and passion of women.”
The date of this painting places it at a time when censorship finally began to ease. Until 2013, the military regime forbade anything expressive of or inciting to political rebellion, and emplaced a harsh censorship regime to ban nudity, abstraction, cartoons, even the use of red, black, or white (because of their potential to suggest blood, violence, good or evil); and essentially anything otherwise deemed by the censors as morally depraved.
Hein Htit’s interest in the work of Egon Schiele and Bagyi Aung Soe suggests an inclination for psychologically intense expressionism and exploration of sexuality. Bagyi Aung Soe’s early works were so shocking that he was deemed “mad” by some, but who after his passing was elevated to the highest echelons of Burmese modern artists.
Perhaps the sum total of the shock value in the use of comics, steely nonconformist spirit of the graffiti-like sprays, and playful exuberance of the nude female form in Soft in line reveals an artist confronting the nature of creation and the very meaning.
The date of this painting places it at a time when censorship finally began to ease. Until 2013, the military regime forbade anything expressive of or inciting to political rebellion, and emplaced a harsh censorship regime to ban nudity, abstraction, cartoons, even the use of red, black, or white (because of their potential to suggest blood, violence, good or evil); and essentially anything otherwise deemed by the censors as morally depraved.
Hein Htit’s interest in the work of Egon Schiele and Bagyi Aung Soe suggests an inclination for psychologically intense expressionism and exploration of sexuality. Bagyi Aung Soe’s early works were so shocking that he was deemed “mad” by some, but who after his passing was elevated to the highest echelons of Burmese modern artists.
Perhaps the sum total of the shock value in the use of comics, steely nonconformist spirit of the graffiti-like sprays, and playful exuberance of the nude female form in Soft in line reveals an artist confronting the nature of creation and the very meaning.
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Bogalay Kyaw HtooSigns
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This curious composition appears to represent a casual line of ladies walking with silk umbrellas drawn.
The title, Signs, draws attention to the surreal depiction of what appears to be a human hand on top of each umbrella offering a coded communication resembling sign language for the deaf. The slender women are reminiscent of young ladies one might see going to a Buddhist temple bearing a traditional food container in one hand while holding a pretty parasol in the other. The view of their lithe bodies —costumed in traditional longyis tied at the waist, and blouses covered with shawls— fades as the row steadily recedes into the distance towards the top.
The composition begs for metaphorical association, but are these ladies slowly moving away or forward? If they represent traditional culture (or their youth, or beauty), are we witnessing their sad disappearance; or their slow, steady march toward the unknown? Are these ladies being ascribed here with a romanticized sensuality which elevates or objectifies them? Or both? Is this a sunny or rainy day? Is the foggy blur permeating the scene a silvery shine or sooty smog? Are we viewing a shining past seen through the fog of today?
The title, Signs, draws attention to the surreal depiction of what appears to be a human hand on top of each umbrella offering a coded communication resembling sign language for the deaf. The slender women are reminiscent of young ladies one might see going to a Buddhist temple bearing a traditional food container in one hand while holding a pretty parasol in the other. The view of their lithe bodies —costumed in traditional longyis tied at the waist, and blouses covered with shawls— fades as the row steadily recedes into the distance towards the top.
The composition begs for metaphorical association, but are these ladies slowly moving away or forward? If they represent traditional culture (or their youth, or beauty), are we witnessing their sad disappearance; or their slow, steady march toward the unknown? Are these ladies being ascribed here with a romanticized sensuality which elevates or objectifies them? Or both? Is this a sunny or rainy day? Is the foggy blur permeating the scene a silvery shine or sooty smog? Are we viewing a shining past seen through the fog of today?
These paintings comprise only a small part of the larger Thukhuma collection, and were recently generously gifted to the Burma Art Collection at NIU in 2019 by Dr. Ian Holliday, scholar and collector during the years of transition (2006-2015), while he was doing his own field research in Myanmar.
Further reading
Visit the Thukhuma Collection to explore a vast collection of contemporary Burmese paintings.
Image Gallery
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NIU students and staff explore paintings from this exhibition shown in April 2019 at NIU's Founder's Memorial Library
