Aye Nyein Myint, Aye Nyein Myint, Phyu Mon

March, 2006

Surprised? You shouldn’t be, but it’s quite understandable if you are. Myanmar is not exactly getting press these days for its art community. But in fact, Myanmar’s capital city, Yangon, has an exciting and thriving contemporary art scene comprised of painters, sculptors, digital mixed photographers, performance and installation artists. And among these are some highly exceptional women.
Given Myanmar’s still very traditional culture, one might expect women artists to be a bit more, say, traditional. But as I began talking with a number of them, not only was I enchanted by the diversity of their artistic expression, but also amazed by their varying approaches to themselves as women in relation to their art. Here’s why.

“I wanted to know why my mom never…”
When I first entered Chaw Ei Thein’s Sunflower Art Gallery, I was confronted by an attractive, flamboyant young woman who could have easily stepped out of a commune in California’s golden years – long flowing skirt, sleeveless blouse, topped off by dangling earrings. Sexy would be the word. But here’s the reality check in streets filled with longyi-clad women:
When Chaw Ei leaves her house, she needs to cover the blouse and take off the dangles.
How did this woman, born into a traditional Myanmar family, take a radically different path in her life and art? “When I was a young girl, I was always watching the women around me,” she said, “and I would ask my mom, ‘why don’t you say what you feel, why are you so shy?’”
Needless to say, this degree of self-consciousness and analytical thinking is highly unusual in any traditional culture, specifically for women. In the art world, women artists who consciously think about their social position as women and deliberately fold those ideas into the subject matter of their work are referred to as gender-based artists. The category fits Chaw Ei perfectly.
Chaw Ei’s boldly-coloured, expressionistic paintings, sometimes called surreal, very often portray the constrained position of a woman in a traditional society or the unequal relationship between the sexes.
As recently as last May, she, along with several other artists, was arrested for undertaking a public performance of ‘Mobile Gallery + Mobile Market’. “I had the idea to make people happy for one day by selling, cheaply, things used in daily life, and my friend wanted to sell his paintings too.” The authorities saw otherwise. Chaw Ei’s performance, wearing Shan-style pants (verboten to women), earned the group five days in police custody.



“Now I know I'm not the only one”
Another gender-aware artist is Phyu Mon. Shy upon first meeting, the exact opposite of the flamboyant Chaw Ei in dress and demeanour, Phyu Mon’s strength of personality and conviction doesn’t take long to come through as one begins to ask about her life as a woman and an artist.
“Until I was about 40, I felt very alone and misunderstood as a woman in traditional Myanmar culture.” At that time, as an artist desiring a life different from the normal housewife, Phyu Mon had only her husband, fellow artist Chan Aye, to talk with. “After 40, I began performance work in other countries and saw that these women, too, were struggling with the same issues.” Foremost among other women who she formed a spiritual bond with was the Japanese avant-garde cult-figure Yayoi Kusama. “So then, I consoled myself by understanding that these feelings were not only my own, but also shared by women all over the world.”
Phyu Mon is a multi-faceted artist: painting, performance, writing and, most recently, digital mixed photography. Her short stories about a woman interacting with a man she loves are brilliant in their subtle expression of inner feelings conflicting with outward behaviour.
But it is her latest efforts in digital that are most exciting. In the ‘Hope’ series, “Human’s Hope of Traces,” Phyu Mon’s subject matter, restriction versus freedom, is broad enough to be read on different levels: from constraints of being a woman in a traditional culture, current political confines, to the Buddhist idea of having no choice but to accept one’s particular existence. The digitally mixed ‘Hope’ series represents some of the most cutting edge work being done in Myanmar today.

“If I think too much, ideas don’t flow”
An energetic young woman, Nann Nann is one of Myanmar’s emerging artists whohas already made a name for herself in a handful of solo and group showings in addition to winning Honorary Mention in the Myanmar Contemporary Art Awards 2004. But unlike Phyu Mon and Chaw Ei, she is not concerned to express themes of restriction directly in her work.


Nann Nann, Chaw Ei Thein

Like so many Myanmar artists, Nann Nann’s work is based strongly in Buddhism. However, unlike those artists who paint explicit Buddha-related subject matter to express that belief, Nann Nann filters her feelings about religion through her own abstract style of painting. The elegant three-colour (black/white/gold) paintings – her signature works – are visually accessible to a wide range of international tastes without one having to know that they represent her daily practice of meditation and her own very personal interpretation of that experience.
“Of course, when I’m in the world, I have to be a woman. But if I think too much about being this or that, the ideas don’t flow,” she commented. However, if she relaxes and does what she feels, then the creativity comes freely. “I only think about painting when I’m painting, otherwise, it’s too stressful.”

“I don’t need to go outside”
It would be hard to find a woman artist more different from the above three women than Aye Nyein Myint. Likewise, it would be pressing to find an artist with such a command of her medium (mostly pastel on paper) and execution than Aye Nyein. One of 30 finalists in the Myanmar Contemporary Art Awards 2004, at the young age of 26, she works with traditional still-life subjects: fruit, flowers, animals.
But the execution of that subject matter displays a very modernist eye in light/shadow composition, spatial arrangement, and perspective. I’m embarrassed to say that it took me several viewings of her work before I realised the
innovation and creativity that was before me. In the post-modern art world, traditional subject matter can be too easily written off. I’m happy now to be simply astonished.
Aye Nyein leads the life of a very traditional Myanmar woman – she chooses not to go outside the house alone to seek alternative subject matter. “I see no limitation on my life in this. The subjects I paint, I can do so inside my house.” This statement could be the voice of other exceptional women in the past, like the poet Emily Dickinson or novelist Jane Austen, whose self-restricted lives did not in any way limit their imagination.
These four women artists and their amazing work are but a small sample of the artistic production coming from this enchanting, yet frustrating, country. These artists, both men and women, need all the support and recognition we can give them. You’ll have an opportunity to do just that at the upcoming exhibition at the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi hotel in Chiang Mai.


Phyu Mon