At last there might be some light.¹ Burma experienced its first meeting of local and foreign artists for many decades from 22 - 27 June in Yangon. The meeting, entitled »Collaboration, Networking, Resource-Sharing: Myanmar,«² was co-organized by the Ayeyarwady Art Assembly and the IFIMA (International Forum For InterMedia Art). I must describe the background of the meeting at length, as it alone tells us about the state of modern and contemporary art in Burma³:

Owing to the government's extremely tight control of freedom of expression, education in modern and contemporary art is scarce in Burma. There are two fine-art schools in the country - in Yangon and Mandalay -, yet there are few teachers of new art. Of the artists practising modern and contemporary art, some studied formally, some are completely self-taught, and some did an apprenticeship with masters and older artists. Because of the hard conditions, artists formed groups in order to help each other by sharing information and resources. Two such groups are Gangaw Village and the Inya Artists group. Gangaw Village was formed in 1979 by a group of Yangon University students. Currently numbering 50 members, it organized annual exhibitions as long as it could. The Inya Artists group was founded by artists associated with Aung Myint, a senior artist who runs the Inya Art Gallery in Yangon. Recently, these two groups decided to collaborate more closely to form a new community named Ayeyarwady Art Assembly, with the common aim of founding a contemporary art centre/school. AAA was thus joined by the IFIMA, the organization run by Jay Koh and Chu Chuyuan from Singapore/Malaysia, who have collaborated with Burmese artists since 1997 and decided to do so on a continuous basis. The meeting was the launch of their long-term project for the development of contemporary art in Burma in collaboration with the international community. It consisted of a two-day symposium and four days of »Open Academy: International Artists’ Workshop.«

Myanmar is a mess. The state is utterly bankrupt. Foreigners like us - fly-in-fly-out foreigners and not foreigners who come via the land route⁴ - are looked at merely as a source of revenue, no matter how large or small - either an investment or a unit for compulsory exchange of US$200 upon arrival. The military junta has started to allow some NGOs to come in, but only when they are regarded as yet another source of revenue. Hence, the title of the meeting, which was able to be held semi-officially owing to the tireless effort and contrivance of the local organizer, must have sounded »interesting« for the authorities in many ways. The number of art galleries is increasing, some with a connection to generals, some not, and the authorities would like to know which »resource« they can have a share in through these gallery activities.

There is also a curious mimicry in what the junta does. The ASEAN member-only emigration control counter at Yangon airport and the emigration cards are identical to those in Thailand, and »Visit Myanmar Year« in 1996, which ended up as a total fiasco after the authorities built large hotels and roads using forced labour and covered the main cities with kitsch campaign posters and slogans, resembled Suharto’s 1991 »Visit Indonesia Year,« a part of his [i]keterbukaan[/i] or openness campaign.⁵ There is neither an ideology nor a clear concept behind this junta’s copy of its Asian neighbours - hence it is vulnerable, unreliable and unpredictable.

The IFIMA adopted intriguing tactics to counterbalance this: they invited almost only Asians as international participants.⁶ This made the meeting a kind of antithesis of ASEAN, which, unlike the EU, acts solely as an economic and security association, which tends to disregard the human rights record in any trade negotiations,⁷ and now accepts Myanmar as a full member. At the same time, the list of the foreign participants replaced the manifesto that emphasized the need for artists in post-colonial regions to work on the idea of contemporary art away from Western influence.⁸

The symposium concentrated on working with cultural institutions and co-operating with artist-run organizations in order to set a model for AAA. Experiences of various organizations - the Japan Foundation Japan Cultural Center in Bangkok, Arts Network Asia in Singapore, the Khoj International Workshop in New Delhi, the Substation in Singapore, the Vancouver Artist-Run Center, the Five Arts Center in Malaysia, fineArtforum in Singapore (particularly their use of internet), Reyum Art Gallery/Foundation in Phnom Penh, and Gangaw Village - were discussed.

Taking place among the paintings by Burmese artists hanging on the wall of the venue, the Beikthano Gallery, the Open Academy served as a beginning for an educational program on contemporary art in Burma. It also stressed the post-colonial perspective of new art practice: a report on Documenta 11, the case of Philippines artist Robert Feleo, Indonesian contemporary art,⁹ as well as media and digital art. The fate of Cambodian artists frequently came up - the way Western organizations expect Cambodian artists to create trauma art, and the case of a small art school for children, started by a group of returned refugee artists, that is now being taken over by a large Western NGO. The same fate might be in store for Burmese art. And when Ray Langenbach, a performance artist based in Malaysia, began discussing installation and performance art using the terms of re-presentation and presentation, the question must have become evident to Burmese artists and to those of us looking at them - how to present and re-present who you are?

The junta uses the keyword »union« of 135 or so ethnic groups in the country for their legitimacy. Many of these ethnic groups are divided politically into even smaller units; the word is also crucial for the opposition to win wide public support.¹⁰ In this climate of externalization of ethnic identity, the doctrine of Theravada Buddhism, which dominates all details of life, is being more closely examined than ever in all fields, including politics, and modern and contemporary art. »I would tend to use the word ‘modern’,« said Burmese artist Zeya in the discussion about their modernism and post-modernism, »…when I want to express my opinion clearly.«This is the artist who has written about Buddhism and his art. This internal discourse among Burmese artists on what constitutes their art is thus, for the sake of its own cause, beginning to cohere in the face of political reality. And that makes their installation and performance art,¹¹ which were presented on each day of the installation and performance workshop, especially compelling, and magnets heated debate on each work.¹²

One of the artists, Ko Chan Aye, used stones for both his installation and performance. In the installation, two large natural stones were chained. He explained that he saw spirit in each object and that the piece was about conversation between the stones. In the performance, he first meditated, then cut the picture of a human figure from the frame and replaced it with writing. Then he sat down again, started to cut away something inside his shirt. It turned out that he was cutting the bandage that tied him and the stones together. He took out the stones one by one from under his shirt. He then tied them and dragged them away.

Perhaps the most controversial installation of all was the one by Kyi Wynn. Five female torsos, the top left one white, the top right one black, and the middle three yellow. And if you look at the whole thing from left to right, the white torso is plain, but the next three yellow ones are restricted in one way or another: one has its eyes covered, one its ears, and one its mouth. And in the end the black torso is hung from the neck, which makes it looks like the result of suicide or execution. The foreign participants found the piece problematic because of the potentially racist and sexist connotations, and thus debated fiercely with the local artists. Then, afterwards, we learnt from an undisclosed source that the piece was about »the lady.« This gap between locals and foreign critics thus generated another dimension; our ignorance and a patterned, or Western-trained, way of looking at art works was a useful tool for the local artists to hide the real message in the presence of »authorized« people. This highlighted the way Burmese artists kept sending us signals and messages in carefully crafted metaphors throughout the whole event. Sensing this, we decided to present ourselves as naive in public - sometimes it’s necessary to instrumentalize ourselves as a mere »foreign resource« for the benefit of locals. After all, on the cover of the program, there had to be a clearly printed statement, as follows: »This is a privately organized event open to invitees only, and we have no intention to discuss any political issue.«¹³

When the local participants were asking for help and support from the international community, writer Min Khaike Soe said they needed help to eliminate a language barrier that existed between them and the outside world. This meeting has probably opened a new chapter in the history of art in Burma, and the long, long passage will follow in which each word - from modernity to eco-feminism - will be defined in a balance between regional and global meaning. Theirs is a web of language that has to be learnt by those of us that are not conversant with the reality of their life. ut first, listen to an object, including ourselves in the world that consists of objects, they say:

The sky/didn’t recognize day and night/Day and night also/didn’t recognize the sky/In reality/they’ve been separated/since their inception./ Shanties/Pavement/Parks and Cemeteries/know more about this story.¹⁴

Here, an essence of the art of presentation is reverberated. And that will be resonated by many.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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