Memory: Myanmar / Burma

[ FEATURE ]
http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_16/faf_v16_n11/reviews/feature.html
Memory: Collaboration, Networking and Resource-Sharing: Myanmar
by Estelle Yaw © 2002


Collaboration, Networking and Resource-Sharing: Myanmar (CNR:M) was conceived as an open-ended project to assist Myanmar artists, deprived of resource, establish a contemporary art and culture centre in Myanmar. The event also served as a foundation for setting up a strong international network of artists, curators, writers and organisers interested in furthering independent art, collaborative structures, intercultural collaboration and socially engaged art. CNRM has immediate and longer-term components: an international symposium and 'Open Academy' workshops on collaboration, networking & resource sharing which was staged in June; and the longer-term project to establish an art center, to be managed by artists, with artists-in-residency programmmes for local and foreign artists. For Collaboration, Networking and Resource-Sharing: Myanmar, artists from Gangaw Village and Inya Artists groups, and other independent artists interested in modern and contemporary art, came together to form a new community, Ayeyarwady Art Assembly, to promote and advance modern and contemporary art in Myanmar. This new community includes artists from Yangon, Mandalay and various other regions of Myanmar.


"Artists are not necessarily intellectuals in a traditional or elitist sense. They do not claim for the sole authority to produce the worldview of a certain society. Instead, they claim for the autonomy of creative expression, trying to disseminate various discourses in the public sphere. Such a creative situation is a prerequisite for the building of a civil society. For the artist the creative activity is based on the interpretation of the actual context of the society she or he belongs to." This definition of the artist opened a very unusual occasion, a gathering of Burmese and international contemporary artists in the heart of Rangoon.


The symposium "Collaboration, Networking and Resource-Sharing: Myanmar", organized by IFIMA (International forum for Intermedia Art), was set up to provide information on resources and net working for contemporary artists in Burma. The long-term aim of the collaboration between IFIMA and Ayeyarwady Art Assembly (AAA) was for the artists grouped under the AAA to set up an independent contemporary art space in Burma. The symposium brought together Burmese artists and guests representing international cultural founders, curators, artists and people representing artists run spaces from Asia. It was a great opportunity to see the artists' current work and to exchange information about what is available to artists to help them work together and network.


Burma's ruling junta is infamous. Amnesty International has denounced it as having one of the worst record of human rights abuse. Aung San Suu Kyi, the peace Nobel Prize and leader of the opposition party National League for Democracy, has been in and out of house arrest. There are two million refugees, migrants and exiles in neighboring countries. Hence, contemporary art is not usually the first thing that springs to mind when one mentions Burma but even a dictatorship cannot completely control creative expression. Contemporary Burmese artists have conceptualized modern art according to both the Buddhist tradition, in which the artists see an abstract perception of the world, and in the traditional mythology and folklore, presented as a surrealist perception of the world. Under the British colony, academic art based on romantic and realistic styles was the only art accessible to the public and became the form accepted as Art. Modern art was introduced to Burma in the 50's .The term modern art was popularized then and several modern artists launched their careers during this decade. Since the military took power, it has favored traditional art, that is to say realistic art, as the medium to promote "Myanmar heritage, culture and values."


There are three formal art schools in Burma, one in Mandalay, one in Yangoon and the recently opened University of culture. The only style of art taught is realism. Some artists have exerted their own autonomy and branched out into contemporary art learning from books, being self-taught or teaching each other within The Gangaw Village created in 1979 and the Inya artist group. Both of the groups include artists working in a variety of personal styles and subjects expressing the artists' perception of their environment, domestic life, experiences and commitment to art through painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Rather than building a civil society, the most apparent wish is to survive as artists, to progress and represent their country. Being a contemporary artist in Burma is full of complications and dangers. Organizing a public exhibition is a lengthy process. The artists must describe explicitly the content of their work and apply to several government bodies to get an authorization. Once the work is hung up, inspectors come along and decide which piece can or cannot be shown. Oppressive regimes have a great fear of artists' production, and rightly so, the essence of it being individual expression, the anti thesis of oppression. On the other hand, artists working in realistic-romantic styles, produce unthreatening works exhibited in big commercial galleries, patroned by rich buyers. Money is so close to power.


The limitations of working under such a regime became obvious very quickly: the general censorship, the lack of communication through out the country, the impossibility to discuss cultural and national identity openly, to enquire about artists outside of Mandalay or Rangoon or the small number of women participants.


There are many more male contemporary artists in Burma than female contemporary artists. The system of masters passing on their skills may be partly responsible for this in Burma. On a wider scale, women's position in society is undermined and marginalized.


I will make a parallel between feminist art and the manifestation of the role of art in social change. The focus on female creativity has emerged from the wish to reclaim women's history and to resituate women within the history of cultural production and representation. Yako Wang, a Taiwanese artist, suggests that "the four major aspects of feminist art are: its concentration on things ignored by male artists, its view of the creative expression as an educative consciousness rising process, its highlighting of women's position and circumstances and its emphasis on the relationship between work, artist and society-through the work's purpose and meaning." Feel free to replace male by power and women by …


Many topics introduced by the foreign speakers at the CNRS:M symposium were about the identity of the artist in post-colonial society. For example, Fatima Lassay, from The University of the Philippines explained, "Contemporary art draws from tradition and history, analyses it and pushes it forward. In order to do this we must re-examine our ethnic background and heritage. We have to recover our memory." Burma, a post-colonial country, is presently colonized by its own military. To initiate the recovery of Burma's memory is to question the Union of Myanmar. One piece if work, misread by the foreign guests, led to questions about ethnic discrimination. This issue is however to sensitive to be discussed.


Why bother with Art? It is not an income generating activity, but it is the food of the personal and collective mind. We are strange flowers; basic nutriments are not enough for our human brains in the long term. The understanding of the creative process is essential to the individual's growth and survival. It is a process used throughout human activities.


I see the work of art as the track shaped by paws, feet, the earth retaining the leaves and seeds fallen off surrounding trees, lost belongings, pieces of life; the track of culture and people's history. Luis Sepulveda, a Chilean writer and ex-political prisoner, writes on the ownership/trackings of a work of art, "If I was a sculptor and I was commissioned to make a statue of Alexander the Great, at its foot my name would come last. First would come the names of the Cavatori (marble miners) who had chosen, cut and brought down from the mountain the slab of marble. Then the names of the marble cutters who gave it form, followed by the names of the ones who prepared the lard, brought the rosemary, the names of the bakers and the names of the fresh Toscana wine grape pickers."


Art is the simultaneous expression of a community's self-realization. Art making springs from questioning what "I" am in relation to the world as it is, what is the relationship between the maker and the community and where does the community stand in relation to the wider world. The answer changes with the environment and it also can alter that environment. Through the Symposium, the Burmese artists had a rare chance to remind the wider world of their existence. Now they face the challenge to determine their relationship to their own community and environment. "Art is not a mirror to reflect reality but rather a hammer with which to shape it", wrote Bertold Brecht.


—
Estelle Yaw is a French artist and educator living in Thailand. She is involved in art projects with women and children from the migrant workers and refugee camps communities from Burma.



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