Introduction
For most of the recent past, the country known today as Myanmar and until 1989 as Burma was subject to strict authoritarian rule. In 1962, a harsh state socialist regime was instituted with overt military backing. In 1988, collapse of that system at a time of mass protest for democracy resulted only in installation of a formal military junta. Not until 2011 was the junta finally dissolved and control handed to a quasi-civilian government that soon set about implementing a series of major reforms.
Throughout the authoritarian period, draconian censorship was enforced. Printed material was subject to pre-publication vetting, and non-state publishers of books and newspapers (issued only on a weekly basis as journals) were closely monitored. Many appeared with sections blacked out by the censor, and on occasion even cover stories had to be sacrificed. Film and music were checked just as tightly, with scripts and lyrics routinely submitted for review. Paintings and photographs were also brought under the watchful eye of the censor, and all public exhibitions were required to adhere to rigid controls.
The censorship regime faced by creative artists was deeply conservative. Reflecting the spotlight turned on “degenerate” art by the Nazis in the 1930s, nascent modernist tendencies in painting were viewed with extreme suspicion and largely quashed. Provocative subject matter was outlawed. There were also idiosyncratic constraints. In 1988, when Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues decided to set the logo of the National League for Democracy on a red field, that colour entered the list of taboos.
A measure of the freedom presently spreading across Myanmar is thus the changed environment now confronting painters. While censorship has not yet been abolished, it currently operates with a very light touch. By and large, there is no serious vetting of art shows today, and painters are able to explore a wide range of subjects using techniques, media and colours that even a few years ago would not have been tolerated inside the country.
Almost all of the paintings presented here were completed in the current reform period, as censorship was gradually lifted. The vast majority date from either 2012 or 2013. Together, they provide a snapshot of a critical period in the country’s development. Indeed, when future historians look back on the transition from authoritarian rule, images such as those assembled here will be key primary sources.
Most of the paintings are not explicitly political, though some are. Notably, the work of Min Zaw, Zwe Mon and Zwe Yan Naing has political overtones, with allusions to Aung San Suu Kyi standing alongside a depiction of the 2007 saffron uprising. Aung San, slain independence hero and father of today’s global democracy icon, also features as a symbol both of what might have been, and of what might still be in a country now experiencing significant reform.
Other artists have more prosaic concerns, focused on contemporary life in villages, towns and cities, and on the religious and other rituals that define everyday existence for many people. Alongside depictions of majority Bamar Buddhist culture are the traditions of minority peoples living mostly in peripheral parts. Next to images of laconic peasant life are paintings of Myanmar’s important seafaring communities. Set squarely in a mainly rural landscape are pictures of increasingly dominant cities. Nevertheless, at a time when much is changing in Myanmar, and equally much is not, these paintings also contribute to social and political documentation, and fill out the overall snapshot.
In the years leading up to and beyond a planned 2015 general election, Myanmar seems likely to press ahead with a broad programme of reform. As that happens, it will be painters as much as any other social group who measure the progress made in extending the boundaries of human freedom. Their aspirations are already abundantly clear. The issue to be addressed in the years to come is how fully they are able to deliver on them as complex processes of change play out across the country.
Ian Holliday
The University of Hong Kong
November 2013