Opening only a week after the anniversary of the 2021 army coup in Myanmar, Fighting Fear II: It Goes Without Saying showcases the work of 9 Burmese artists within the intimate area of a house gallery in Newtown—16albermarle. It’s a sequel to the 2021 exhibition, Fighting Fear: #whatshappeninginmyanmar, curated by Nathalie Johnston and Sid Kaung Sett Lin, administrators of Yangon-based Myanm/artwork venture area. Those that are accustomed to the previous exhibition could recall a fiercely irreverent present of posters saturated in revolutionary hues of pink, a color which had been banned from use by the federal government. Two years down the monitor, Nathalie and Sid current the second instalment of Preventing Concern, which shifts in form and temper.
Since our final encounter, lives have stirred, some displaced. In a way, the exhibition is a much-needed replace. We study that many artists have fled the nation, whereas others have discovered sanctuary within the outer fringes of the state, and a pair have remained. The time elapsed and the space traversed is palpable within the inventive practices on show. The immediacy of the pictures of protest now give option to tales of remembrance, resilience, and survival, many advised from afar. Preventing Concern II reminds us that revolution can also be carried out and continued within the granular points and motions of the on a regular basis.
Emily Phyo, for instance, shares pictures documenting her escape from Myanmar through the Thai border to Austin, Texas in the USA. Chosen works from the ultimate few posts of Emily’s social media venture #Response365 (2021–22) are positioned alongside a newer set of pictures marking the start of #BeingEmily (2023–ongoing). Regardless of the somewhat distinct shift from tightly framed portraits that includes the three-finger salute to tender vignettes of abnormal life which blur out and in of focus, lots of the pictures throughout the 2 tasks have been taken within the span of some days. It’s maybe not a lot indicative of an abrupt change in focus, however as an alternative a recasting of perspective.
A reply from Yangon is present in Soe Yu Nwe’s pictures and screenshots of Instagram posts, which accompany her drawings responding to the coup in 2021. They seize moments of enjoyment, frustration, worry, and confusion. We glimpse palms at work in Soe’s clay artwork studio, Studio Nwe, and low-quality photographs of flooded streets and visitors. A calico cat sleeps serenely in a single image, and one other comprises nothing however despairing observations of rising residing prices, electrical energy shortages, and widespread crime. There’s something oddly acquainted and strikingly genuine about these cellular phone footage which dangle within the hallway—it’s as if they might seem at any time on our Instagram feeds—that eats away on the perceived hole between artist and viewer, between Sydney and Yangon.
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Picture: Kaung Su, Untitled #4 2022, inkjet print of Ilford Galerie Easy Pearl picture paper, 38.5 x 50 cm
This impulse to doc connects the works within the exhibition. Min Ma Naing compiles and pastiches collectively pictures taken within the rapid aftermath of the coup in 2021 to type nameless portraits of protestors in Faces of Change. The quotations collected from advert hoc interviews change typical wall texts, sustaining the lifetime of the work as an ongoing strategy of piecing collectively, revisiting, and relaying tales and reminiscences. And but anger and grief doesn’t dissipate. Pink sullies Kaung Su’s Pink Paint Collection (2022) which paperwork the pink paint protests of April 2021. Nearly corrosively, the pigment stains the cityscape, seeping into the cracks in tiled sidewalks, thrown forcefully towards barricades and roadside curbs. It conjures photographs of bloodshed and loss—a stress between presence and violent absence which punctures the photographic floor.
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Picture: Maung Day, Misplaced Kids 3 2022, inkjet print on matte poster paper, 21 x 29.7 cm
The prominence of the {photograph} in Preventing Concern II, nonetheless, doesn’t completely overshadow the array of inventive media on show. Maung Day’s small and seemingly light-hearted etchings include and bear monumental tragedies, accompanied by sombre poems which mourn a era misplaced to and haunted by years of political turmoil and violence. Bart Was Not Right here’s (Kyaw Moe Khine) vivid and stylised illustrations amalgamate intertextual references and imagery to serve provocative critiques of the army regime whereas Richie Nath renders his haunting tribute to victims of the mass burning and looting of Rohingya villages in oils, gouache, and ink.
![](https://www.newmandala.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/882021-generational-cures-2022-inkjet-print-120x120-1-1024x1024.jpg)
Picture: 882021, Generational Curse 2022, inkjet print on matte poster paper, 120 x 120 cm
Subsequent to the stairwell is the most important singular print on present, made particularly for the exhibition. The artist takes the pseudonym 882021, referencing each the hex color #882021—a deep maroon resembling aged blood—and nationwide protests which broke out in 1988 and once more in 2021. 882021’s curiosity within the cyclical sample of political disturbance and trauma in Burmese historical past interprets to his illustration of a Saṃsāra in Generational Curse. It’s concurrently an image of struggling and an expression of hope; 882021’s invocation of the Saṃsāra intimates eventual emancipation.
In addition to their interlapping themes and motives, gallery guests could discover one other commonality uniting the works on show. It’s an exhibition (nearly) completely constituted of inkjet prints, except Soe’s two drawings, which have been first proven as prints in 2021. That is no accident, neither is it a case of slicing corners, however somewhat a vital requirement. Urgency and necessity are embedded within the medium itself and the methods by which it lends itself to replica and dissemination. All artistic endeavors have been initially assembled at Myanm/artwork, Yangon by the curators and artists, after which despatched, downloaded, printed, and editioned in Sydney. The selection of medium is a technique of survival.
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That is most clear in a collection of pictures taken by an nameless artist, which occupies all the size of a six-metre-long wall going through the gallery entrance. Nameless sends these pictures from Kachin state in Northern Burma, the place the Kachin Independence Military (KIA) has joined forces with the Folks’s Defence Drive (PDF) to type the armed resistance towards the army junta. Of the 9 images displayed within the gallery, solely three have been reproduced on-line and in catalogues to protect the anonymity of the photographic topics. Once more, these are artworks produced and circulated at unimaginable dangers. Maybe it’s our data of this indisputable fact that provides to the poignancy of a picture of a younger man taking part in the violin in a soldier’s camp, the primary of the road of pictures on the wall—it’s a image shared like a secret, on view solely within the area by which we stand.
My closing level of reward is the exhibition’s inseverable connection to the now—a passion and quickness to answer real-time occasions that’s typically quashed by the slow-turning wheel of academia and establishments. Over the course of the exhibition’s six-and-a-half week run, 16albermarle hosted a collection of public applications which supplied up the venture area to Sydney’s Burmese group. On 4 March audiences have been invited to a dialog between Burmese-Australian activist Mon Zin and the Government Officer for Union Help Overseas-APHEDA Kate Lee, moderated by Sydney College’s Dr Susan Banki. On the exhibition’s opening, filmmaker The Khit Nay spoke to the vitality of artists within the revolution as image-makers and documentarians of resistance—as those that are the final to be acknowledged in occasions of political stability and the primary to be persecuted in political turmoil. He’s joined by cultural employee Khin Thu Thu who interprets for the viewers and urges for the continued assist of the artists. A close-by desk is generously crammed with plates of lahpet thoke (fermented tea leaf salad) and different scrumptious meals, ready and served by Ma Ei Nu, the proprietor of a grocery retailer referred to as Golden Mandalay in Auburn. As we eat, discuss, hear, and look, we’re reminded that questions of easy methods to protest invariably give rise to questions of easy methods to stand in solidarity.
Preventing Concern II: It Goes With out Saying was a fundraising exhibition proven at 16albermarle in Newtown from 8 February 2023 till 25 March 2023. Artworks might be bought on a print-by-demand foundation and all proceeds might be remitted to artists after deducting print prices.
The following exhibition at 16albermarle Mission Area might be Ghosts from the Previous by Indonesian artists Enka Komariah & Ipeh Nur, working 15 April–20 Might 2023.