In 1989, Aung Myint established the Inya Gallery of Art, the first gallery of modern art in the country, in a shed outside his house. They found ways around the imposed absurdities by using euphemisms or codes in their paintings to outwit censors, or by refusing to publicly exhibit their work, only showing it in their homes. Maung Maung Htway, “Starving For the Light” (1999) (image courtesy the artist)ĭespite the government crackdown, it was impossible to silence Myanmar’s artists entirely. In 1962, members of the military staged a successful coup, which affected all cultural production. Included within these were traditional temple construction, instruments, marionettes, and classical dance, often grounded in Buddhist myths and stories. Art students tended to imitate their teachers’ work. Art training emphasized four main subjects: sculpture, painting, music, and dramatic arts. The Ministry of Culture also came into being in 1952, with a mandate to control all creative curriculum.
In 1952, the Myanmar School of Fine Arts opened, followed by another state school of fine art in Mandalay. He went on to write From Tradition to Modern, one of only three books on modern art allowed to be published in the country until 1988. It was then that the term “modern art” entered the country’s lexicon, thanks to U or “Bagyi” (which translates as “painter”) Aung Soe, who had studied at Rabindranath Tagore’s art ashram in India and been exposed to some of the giants of 20th-century modernism through visits to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The country catapulted from landlines to smartphones and Facebook, flying past computer-based internet in fewer than five years.Ī page of traditional textile designs in U Aye Myint’s Burmese Designs Through DrawingĪfter throwing off the shackles of colonial rule, Myanmar had just 14 years to experiment with independence. Then, in 2013, Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor and the Qatari company Ooredoo were awarded contracts to connect most of Myanmar to a wireless phone network. During that time, internet café users had to supply their passport numbers, addresses, and phone numbers to café owners, with all usage recorded and sent to Myanmar Info-Tech every two weeks. As recently as 2012, only 1% of the population used the internet, and only 5% had mobile phone access. Today, a SIM card costs a mere $1 in a country where the minimum monthly wage is approximately $67. The price dropped to $500 around 2006, then $250 in 2012.
Consider these stats: In the year 2000, a SIM phone card cost roughly $2,000. YANGON, Myanmar - The contemporary art scene in Myanmar (Burma) is undergoing a whiplash-inducing level of change that reflects the trajectory of the country.
A bus in Myanmar (all photos by author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)
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