RECOVERING AGENCY THROUGH ART-MAKING AMID POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY AND EXILE :
HOW DO YOU CREATE WHEN THE WORLD SHAKES?
How Do You Create When the World Shakes grows out of two pressing questions: What happens to artistic practice – and individual the agency it sustains – when ‘normal life’ is upended by political uncertainty, armed conflict, or forced migration? When artists are severed from their communities, what do they most fiercely protect within themselves, and what does this inner life reveal about the interplay between creative practice, memory, and identity?
Cultural heritage is a living and often contested process of making meaning from shared experience. The uncertainty of shifting political reality takes shape in the tensions between what communities choose to carry forward and what political repression and exile require them to leave behind. Contemporary artists are vital diagnosticians of these conditions, recording the collective spiritual disintegration that can result from political disorder and reflecting this pathology back to society. This is also why the creative arts are so often targeted by authorities, and why artists and their work are so often among the first casualties when political worlds come apart. In the conversations ahead, our featured artists, gallerists, and curators recast these questions by moving away from familiar narratives of trauma and resilience into deeper terrain: the internal processes of art making itself. When political upheaval threatens to conscript both the artist and their work into a narrative of ‘artivism’, collapsing the full complexity of a creative life into a single label, our artists share their personal insights and hard-won methods for resisting exactly that.
People in Myanmar have lived under the shadow of military rule for generations. Since the Tatmadaw (Burmese military) first seized power in 1962, the country has cycled repeatedly through autocratic military governance, brief democratic openings, and violent reversals, producing one of the longest-running civil conflicts in modern history. On February 1st, 2021, a new coup abruptly ended Myanmar’s fragile democratic transition, sparking the Spring Revolution and a new asymmetrical armed conflict between the Tatmadaw and the People’s Defence Force (PDF) — a resistance movement composed significantly of young people who left their professional lives, their studies, and their futures to take up arms against their own government. The result has been catastrophic: more than five million people displaced inside and outside the country, adding to the many millions more who have lived in exile or internal displacement since the 1960s. This project is a direct response to that long history and its latest chapter.
Led by MIT Artist-in-Residence Kyaw Moe Khine (a.k.a. Bart Was Not Here) a Burmese visual artist residing in New York City – and supported by Nathalie Johntson, contemporary art historian, curator, and founder of Myanm/art Gallery in Yangon, and Alicia Stevens, MIT GHI Pillar Co-coordinator for Heritage, Memory, and Identity – this project brings together the voices of Burmese visual artists and cultural practitioners navigating the ongoing consequences of loss, displacement, and the unexpected demands these circumstances place on creative life. Yet as the deeply personal conversations in this publication make clear, creative practices and the intergenerational memories held within them are also fiercely protected. The artists gathered here are engaged in a form of heritage-making: preserving, transmitting, and reimagining cultural identity at the precise moment when the forces of authoritarianism seek to extinguish it. In this sense, their work speaks directly to some of the most pressing questions in contemporary heritage studies, across the humanities, and in our rapidly changing world.
At the heart of this project is a series of intimate, wide-ranging conversations between visual artist Kyaw Moe Khine (Bart Was Not Here) and his community. Highlighted here and continued on our website, the workshops feature visual artists: Wunna Aung, Thynn Lei Nwe, Kaung Su, Maung Day, Nge Lay, Mayco Naing, Pinky Htut Aung, Soe Yu Nwe, Kaung Sett Lin (Sid), and Aung Myat Htay. The interviews were conducted in Burmese and translated into English with great care by Kyaw Moe Khine and Maung Day, himself one of the participating artists.
This publication is one part of a larger, ongoing project that also includes a website, a traveling exhibition, and an edited volume. Taken together, these works aim to move the conversation about art making, political uncertainty, and exile to deeper and more human register. The artists in these pages are living their answers and offering something of real value not only to those who study displacement and cultural survival, but to anyone, anywhere, who has had to find a way to keep creating when the ground beneath ordinary life gives way.
- Kyaw Moe Khine, Nathalie Johnston, and Alicia Stevens, 2026
How Do You Create When the World Shakes is a collaborative project funded by the MIT Global Humanities, and the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC), created in partnership with the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.
Cultural heritage is a living and often contested process of making meaning from shared experience. The uncertainty of shifting political reality takes shape in the tensions between what communities choose to carry forward and what political repression and exile require them to leave behind. Contemporary artists are vital diagnosticians of these conditions, recording the collective spiritual disintegration that can result from political disorder and reflecting this pathology back to society. This is also why the creative arts are so often targeted by authorities, and why artists and their work are so often among the first casualties when political worlds come apart. In the conversations ahead, our featured artists, gallerists, and curators recast these questions by moving away from familiar narratives of trauma and resilience into deeper terrain: the internal processes of art making itself. When political upheaval threatens to conscript both the artist and their work into a narrative of ‘artivism’, collapsing the full complexity of a creative life into a single label, our artists share their personal insights and hard-won methods for resisting exactly that.
People in Myanmar have lived under the shadow of military rule for generations. Since the Tatmadaw (Burmese military) first seized power in 1962, the country has cycled repeatedly through autocratic military governance, brief democratic openings, and violent reversals, producing one of the longest-running civil conflicts in modern history. On February 1st, 2021, a new coup abruptly ended Myanmar’s fragile democratic transition, sparking the Spring Revolution and a new asymmetrical armed conflict between the Tatmadaw and the People’s Defence Force (PDF) — a resistance movement composed significantly of young people who left their professional lives, their studies, and their futures to take up arms against their own government. The result has been catastrophic: more than five million people displaced inside and outside the country, adding to the many millions more who have lived in exile or internal displacement since the 1960s. This project is a direct response to that long history and its latest chapter.
Led by MIT Artist-in-Residence Kyaw Moe Khine (a.k.a. Bart Was Not Here) a Burmese visual artist residing in New York City – and supported by Nathalie Johntson, contemporary art historian, curator, and founder of Myanm/art Gallery in Yangon, and Alicia Stevens, MIT GHI Pillar Co-coordinator for Heritage, Memory, and Identity – this project brings together the voices of Burmese visual artists and cultural practitioners navigating the ongoing consequences of loss, displacement, and the unexpected demands these circumstances place on creative life. Yet as the deeply personal conversations in this publication make clear, creative practices and the intergenerational memories held within them are also fiercely protected. The artists gathered here are engaged in a form of heritage-making: preserving, transmitting, and reimagining cultural identity at the precise moment when the forces of authoritarianism seek to extinguish it. In this sense, their work speaks directly to some of the most pressing questions in contemporary heritage studies, across the humanities, and in our rapidly changing world.
At the heart of this project is a series of intimate, wide-ranging conversations between visual artist Kyaw Moe Khine (Bart Was Not Here) and his community. Highlighted here and continued on our website, the workshops feature visual artists: Wunna Aung, Thynn Lei Nwe, Kaung Su, Maung Day, Nge Lay, Mayco Naing, Pinky Htut Aung, Soe Yu Nwe, Kaung Sett Lin (Sid), and Aung Myat Htay. The interviews were conducted in Burmese and translated into English with great care by Kyaw Moe Khine and Maung Day, himself one of the participating artists.
This publication is one part of a larger, ongoing project that also includes a website, a traveling exhibition, and an edited volume. Taken together, these works aim to move the conversation about art making, political uncertainty, and exile to deeper and more human register. The artists in these pages are living their answers and offering something of real value not only to those who study displacement and cultural survival, but to anyone, anywhere, who has had to find a way to keep creating when the ground beneath ordinary life gives way.
- Kyaw Moe Khine, Nathalie Johnston, and Alicia Stevens, 2026
How Do You Create When the World Shakes is a collaborative project funded by the MIT Global Humanities, and the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC), created in partnership with the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, Art Writing, Film
Kaung Su was born in Yangon, Myanmar. Between 1991-94, he studied painting with local artist Pyi Soe Myint and attended Yangon’s State School Of Fine Arts briefly. He has been a regular participant in numerous group exhibitions both in Myanmar and abroad, since 1995, as well as in performance art. In 2001, he had his very first solo exhibition at Lawkanat Gallery in Yangon.
He creates experimental canvases in earthly tones and combined oil, emulsion, acrylic, enamel with diverse materials such as woods, pieces of plate, plaster powder and shellac. In 2008, Kaung Su took up more universal subject matters dealing with cosmic disasters, climate affairs, human caused-problems between us and cosmology. He creates his installations using wood, animal bones, neon lights, disposable syringe and a wide variety of other materials. He also has been closely associated with the medium of video since 2009.
In 2008, he spent one month in Chiang Mai as a resident artist, supported by Heinrich Boll Foundation (Germany). In September 2011, he received “Special Mention For New Vision Award” for his short film (“The Butchery Day”), Wathan Film Festival (2011), Yangon.
He organized three art exchange programs that “Ongoing Echoes”, international Art exchange Project – 2009 to 2011, and also participated in other foreign art biennales/festivals and projects. Kaung Su also has been actively involved in arts management and teaching a curatorial course at New Zero art space, Yangon. In 2012, he stayed one month in Manhattan as an inbound resident artist with the Apexart foundation in New York, USA. In July 2014, he participated in the START art fair at Saatchi Gallery, London, presented by Yone Arts.
In October 2015, he received second time of 3 weeks explorative residency fellowship award program of apexart, New York, USA. He is the regular juror of apexart’s international open call for exhibitions, since 2016. Now he lives and works in Yangon, Myanmar.
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Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, Art Writing, Film
Maung Day is a poet, visual and performance artist. He is also a translator and a development
worker.
Maung Day holds a diploma in Mechanical Engineering from Thanlyin Institute of Technology, Myanmar, a Bachelor in Physics from Dagon University, Yangon, Myanmar and a Master in International Development Studies from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
Maung Day has published eight books of poetry in Burmese and in 2023, his new book of poetry in English, Death in Summer, was released from Chin Music Press, Seattle, the USA. His poems have appeared in international journals, and he has worked as the editor of several art and literary magazines and weekly journals. He has contributed many essays on art and artists to local magazines and exhibition catalogues. In 2008, he co-founded the Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival. His first solo exhibition took place in Bangkok in 2011 and he has also exhibited in Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Vietnam. In 2018, his work was most notably exhibited as a part of the acclaimed exhibition, “A Beast, A God, and A Line”, which travelled from Dhaka to Hong Kong to Warsaw to Yangon. Maung Day contributed to the publication of Burma Spring, a poetry book and testament to the military coup détat, published in 2022. His work is in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum.
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MAYCO NAING (b.1984)
Photography, Curation
Photography, Curation
Mayco Naing is a contemporary visual artist and photographer born and based in Myanmar. Her practice spans journalism, fine art, commercial and conceptual photography, shaped by a longstanding interest in social issues, identity, memory, and the stories that remain unseen.
May began her photographic career in a small photo studio in Yangon and has since exhibited her work internationally, including at the Lyon Biennale and Bangkok Biennale, as well as photography festivals in Lishui and Dali, China, Bangkok, India, and Colorado.
Alongside her artistic practice, May has worked with the Yangon Photo Festival since 2011, where she has spent more than a decade teaching and mentoring emerging photographers, particularly in communities with limited access to photographic education. Her commitment to education and cultural exchange has become an integral part of her practice.
Following an artist residency in Marseille, May has continued to develop her artistic voice while creating connections between Myanmar and international audiences. Her work explores Myanmar’s social and political realities through photography and an expanding interdisciplinary practice that includes poetry readings, contemporary dance, photo magazines, screenings, projections, and exhibitions.
Working in the context of Myanmar’s often overlooked presence in Europe, as well as the wider realities of war and conflict, May sees art as a way of making distant stories more visible and bringing audiences closer to experiences that might otherwise remain unseen. Her practice creates spaces for dialogue between personal experience, collective memory, and the complex realities of contemporary Myanmar.
May began her photographic career in a small photo studio in Yangon and has since exhibited her work internationally, including at the Lyon Biennale and Bangkok Biennale, as well as photography festivals in Lishui and Dali, China, Bangkok, India, and Colorado.
Alongside her artistic practice, May has worked with the Yangon Photo Festival since 2011, where she has spent more than a decade teaching and mentoring emerging photographers, particularly in communities with limited access to photographic education. Her commitment to education and cultural exchange has become an integral part of her practice.
Following an artist residency in Marseille, May has continued to develop her artistic voice while creating connections between Myanmar and international audiences. Her work explores Myanmar’s social and political realities through photography and an expanding interdisciplinary practice that includes poetry readings, contemporary dance, photo magazines, screenings, projections, and exhibitions.
Working in the context of Myanmar’s often overlooked presence in Europe, as well as the wider realities of war and conflict, May sees art as a way of making distant stories more visible and bringing audiences closer to experiences that might otherwise remain unseen. Her practice creates spaces for dialogue between personal experience, collective memory, and the complex realities of contemporary Myanmar.
VIEW MAYCO NAING’S SELECTED ARTWORKS
NGE LAY (b.1979)
Multidisciplinary Artist
Multidisciplinary Artist
Nge Lay is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Paris. She received her DNSAP (Master’s Diploma) from the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2025, following a BA in Fine Art Painting (2003) from the National University of Arts and Culture, Yangon and a BA in Economics (2004) Yangon East University.
Working across performance, installation, sculpture, and photography, Lay’s practice explores Myanmar’s social and political realities, historical contexts, and personal narratives. A central concern of her work is rural education, which she addresses through long-term art projects with schools in her husband’s village of Thuye’dan. Following her experience of exile, her work has increasingly focused on migration, displacement, belonging, and the complexities of living between places.
Nge Lay’s work has been exhibited internationally across Europe, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Selected exhibitions include Chaque vie est une histoire, Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris (2025); Dislocations, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024); Autohistorias, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille (2024); Venice Meeting Point, Venice (2024); documenta fifteen (2022); and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8 - 2016). She is also a co-organiser of the Thuye’dan Village Art Project and was a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2011 and 2020.
Working across performance, installation, sculpture, and photography, Lay’s practice explores Myanmar’s social and political realities, historical contexts, and personal narratives. A central concern of her work is rural education, which she addresses through long-term art projects with schools in her husband’s village of Thuye’dan. Following her experience of exile, her work has increasingly focused on migration, displacement, belonging, and the complexities of living between places.
Nge Lay’s work has been exhibited internationally across Europe, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Selected exhibitions include Chaque vie est une histoire, Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris (2025); Dislocations, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024); Autohistorias, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille (2024); Venice Meeting Point, Venice (2024); documenta fifteen (2022); and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8 - 2016). She is also a co-organiser of the Thuye’dan Village Art Project and was a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2011 and 2020.
VIEW NGE LAY’S SELECTED ARTWORKS
PINKY HTUT AUNG (b.1992)
Multidisciplinary Artist
Multidisciplinary Artist
Pinky Htut Aung is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist from Myanmar, started her career as a musician in 2013. Coming from a family of musicians, playing musical instruments was part of growing up for her. As a child, she had been pursing her dream to become a musician while painting and sculpting had been a kind of therapy to overcome her social anxiety.
Pinky’s first group exhibition in 2018 ‘Clouds are Thoughts’ encouraged her to further explore digital art and art in a more transdisciplinary way; fusing sonic, music and visuals. Since 2020, she is also actively composing for films, documentaries, collaborating with choreographers and visual artists.
After the 2021 military coup, Pinky had to leave the country for security reasons and now resides in Paris to continue her artistic practices and research. She is currently a member of l’atelier des artistes en exil and winner of the European Creative program “In Ex(il)Lab.”
Pinky’s first group exhibition in 2018 ‘Clouds are Thoughts’ encouraged her to further explore digital art and art in a more transdisciplinary way; fusing sonic, music and visuals. Since 2020, she is also actively composing for films, documentaries, collaborating with choreographers and visual artists.
After the 2021 military coup, Pinky had to leave the country for security reasons and now resides in Paris to continue her artistic practices and research. She is currently a member of l’atelier des artistes en exil and winner of the European Creative program “In Ex(il)Lab.”
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SOE YU NWE (b.1989)
Creamics, Sculpture, Painting, Drawing
Creamics, Sculpture, Painting, Drawing
Soe Yu Nwe draws inspiration from Burmese folklore, vernacular arts, and Buddhist and animistic practices. Her sculptures often feature fragmented female bodies transformed into visceral, semi-botanical forms.
Reflecting her own ethnic Chinese heritage in the context of her upbringing in Myanmar, Nwe’s practice embraces hybridity to explore the multiplicity and fluidity of identity. One of her recurring mythical motifs is the “Goddess of the Serpent”, a metaphor for the self, rebirth, and femininity – a symbolic challenge to the conservative gender roles traditionally upheld in Myanmar’s Buddhist doctrine. Another significant motif is the head of Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy). Inspired by her encounter with the Kannon (Guanyin) statues at Sanjūsangen-dō in Kyoto where the deity appears as male, unlike the typically female depictions in Myanmar, Nwe began exploring gender identity through this mythological figure, expanding the motif into a new body of work. In her “Inspiration from Shan State” series, she explored her family’s migration history from Yunnan to Myanmar. In her acquired work at the British Museum’s “Burma to Myanmar” exhibition, Soe narrated her identity and emotional conflict through the Burmese Python symbol.
Soe’s work has been exhibited internationally including institutions such as Leeum Museum of Art (Korea), Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (Australia), Humboldt Forum (Germany), Simose Art Museum (Japan), The New Taipei City Yingge Ceramic Museum (Taiwan), National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (Indonesia) and ArtScience Museum (Singapore). Soe was named in 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30: Art & Style. Soe has been awarded the inaugural 2023 Advocacy for the Arts Fellowship from The Rockefeller Foundation and CARE USA.
Reflecting her own ethnic Chinese heritage in the context of her upbringing in Myanmar, Nwe’s practice embraces hybridity to explore the multiplicity and fluidity of identity. One of her recurring mythical motifs is the “Goddess of the Serpent”, a metaphor for the self, rebirth, and femininity – a symbolic challenge to the conservative gender roles traditionally upheld in Myanmar’s Buddhist doctrine. Another significant motif is the head of Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy). Inspired by her encounter with the Kannon (Guanyin) statues at Sanjūsangen-dō in Kyoto where the deity appears as male, unlike the typically female depictions in Myanmar, Nwe began exploring gender identity through this mythological figure, expanding the motif into a new body of work. In her “Inspiration from Shan State” series, she explored her family’s migration history from Yunnan to Myanmar. In her acquired work at the British Museum’s “Burma to Myanmar” exhibition, Soe narrated her identity and emotional conflict through the Burmese Python symbol.
Soe’s work has been exhibited internationally including institutions such as Leeum Museum of Art (Korea), Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (Australia), Humboldt Forum (Germany), Simose Art Museum (Japan), The New Taipei City Yingge Ceramic Museum (Taiwan), National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (Indonesia) and ArtScience Museum (Singapore). Soe was named in 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30: Art & Style. Soe has been awarded the inaugural 2023 Advocacy for the Arts Fellowship from The Rockefeller Foundation and CARE USA.
VIEW SOE YU NWE’S SELECTED ARTWORKS
Thynn Lei Nwe (b.1991)
Painting, Sculpture, Illustration
Painting, Sculpture, Illustration
Thynn Lei Nwe is based in Yangon and studied Fine Arts (specializing in Painting) at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore from 2012 to 2014.
Since 2009 to present, Nwe has participated in exhibitions in Yangon, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and solo exhibitions in 2018 and 2024 in Yangon. Nwe’s series of works were also collected by the British Museum which was exhibited as a part of Burma To Myanmar exhibition in 2024. She was the former resident artist at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2010; Rimbun Dahan, Selangor, Malaysia in 2016; and Walden Art, Ménerbes, France in 2024.
Since 2009 to present, Nwe has participated in exhibitions in Yangon, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and solo exhibitions in 2018 and 2024 in Yangon. Nwe’s series of works were also collected by the British Museum which was exhibited as a part of Burma To Myanmar exhibition in 2024. She was the former resident artist at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2010; Rimbun Dahan, Selangor, Malaysia in 2016; and Walden Art, Ménerbes, France in 2024.
VIEW THYNN LEI NWE’S SELECTED ARTWORKS
Wunna Aung (b.1978)
Painting, Sculpture, Printmaking
Painting, Sculpture, Printmaking
Wunna Aung was born in Shwe Kyin (Bago Division) and has lived all his life in the capital city Yangon. Creativity for Wunna is an act of crossing aesthetic and cultural frontiers and genres. In other words, his multifaceted oeuvre has consistently shown his ability to trespass cultures, notably by crisscrossing the ancient culture of Myanmar with his iconic Pop paintings. An examination of such a concept leads fairly directly to the relationship between contemporary art and material culture.
As much as Wunna is engrossed in popular culture, he is equally fascinated by personalities that have shaped Myanmar’s history – both by their symbolic nature and their vestiges of human existence. The dynamics of such representations lie in the paintings’ potential, where his working process is more like a painted collage. Instead of incorporating external elements into the picture, however, he creates layers for visual textures. A member of ROAR (Release of Artistic Rage) group, Wunna Aung is a regular participant in urban art activities in Yangon. Amongst notable exhibitions he has participated in recently are: Art + Plug Season One to Eight (2013-20) Exhibitions, Rendezvous II: South East Asia Urban Art Event (2013), and Unleashed (Myanm/art) (2017), R0c And Roll (Myanm/art)(2016), Myanmar New Wave Pop Art Revisited (Intersection Gallery, Singapore)(2017), Playing Time and Space (Intersection Gallery, Singapore)(2019), S.E.A. Focus 2019 (Singapore) and All Too Human (Myanm/art) (2022), Coordinates (D-nakana)(2024). From May to July, 2022, he participated and residenced on LIA (Leipzig International Art Programme) in Leipzig.
As much as Wunna is engrossed in popular culture, he is equally fascinated by personalities that have shaped Myanmar’s history – both by their symbolic nature and their vestiges of human existence. The dynamics of such representations lie in the paintings’ potential, where his working process is more like a painted collage. Instead of incorporating external elements into the picture, however, he creates layers for visual textures. A member of ROAR (Release of Artistic Rage) group, Wunna Aung is a regular participant in urban art activities in Yangon. Amongst notable exhibitions he has participated in recently are: Art + Plug Season One to Eight (2013-20) Exhibitions, Rendezvous II: South East Asia Urban Art Event (2013), and Unleashed (Myanm/art) (2017), R0c And Roll (Myanm/art)(2016), Myanmar New Wave Pop Art Revisited (Intersection Gallery, Singapore)(2017), Playing Time and Space (Intersection Gallery, Singapore)(2019), S.E.A. Focus 2019 (Singapore) and All Too Human (Myanm/art) (2022), Coordinates (D-nakana)(2024). From May to July, 2022, he participated and residenced on LIA (Leipzig International Art Programme) in Leipzig.
VIEW WUNNA AUNG’S SELECTED ARTWORKS
PARTICIPATING ART PROFESSIONALS
Aung Myat Htay (b.1978)
Artist, Independent Curator, Writer, Educator
Artist, Independent Curator, Writer, Educator
ACC grantee artist, writer and independent curator and educator, Aung was practicing bronze sculpture, assisted his father since he was young. Started art education at the state-run Fine Art school in his hometown and graduated BFA at the University of Art & Culture in Yangon. International residencies in the US, Europe, and Asia have furthered his artistic learning.
Working as an artist/educator, he explores the potential in freedom of expression found in contemporary art. He expresses social messages combining the contemporary senses. In 2015 he founded the alternative art learning project School of Contemporary Art Myanmar, and in 2024, he conducted research at the Tokyo University of Arts, with a fellowship grant from the Ishibashi Foundation/The Japan Foundation. Aung Myat Htay was born in Mandalay Upper Burma, and he lives and works in Yangon, Burma.
Working as an artist/educator, he explores the potential in freedom of expression found in contemporary art. He expresses social messages combining the contemporary senses. In 2015 he founded the alternative art learning project School of Contemporary Art Myanmar, and in 2024, he conducted research at the Tokyo University of Arts, with a fellowship grant from the Ishibashi Foundation/The Japan Foundation. Aung Myat Htay was born in Mandalay Upper Burma, and he lives and works in Yangon, Burma.
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Sid Kaung Set Linn
Independent Curator, Gallerist
Independent Curator, Gallerist
Kaung Sett Lin (Sid) is an independent curator and reluctant romantic of the art world, known for conjuring spaces that dabble between the visible and the imagined. His practice focuses on the peripheries of artistic forms and spatial hauntings, often slipping between curatorial intent and emotional residue. Sid’s research unsettles the usual narratives—tracing how curatorial gestures, spatial mannerisms, and fragile documentation map, distort, or even mourn the trajectory of contemporary art in Myanmar. Sid curates like some people keep diaries—lingering in the soft underbelly of the everyday, where feelings wobble into theory, coffee meets crisis, and satire becomes survival.
His work moves through cruel optimism, dislocation, and low-grade hope, exploring “territorial possibilities” as relational intensities. Each exhibition becomes an elegy; each site, a diagram of longing. He is also developing an abstract on the dystopian erudite orchestra—a conceptual ensemble of exhausted intellectuals and emotionally unavailable dreamers performing discordant fugues across fractured institutions. Somewhere between score and screed, the project asks whether erudition can be weaponized, mourned, or merely aestheticized in the ruins—playing not music, but memory, bureaucracy, and beautifully misfiled grief.
His work moves through cruel optimism, dislocation, and low-grade hope, exploring “territorial possibilities” as relational intensities. Each exhibition becomes an elegy; each site, a diagram of longing. He is also developing an abstract on the dystopian erudite orchestra—a conceptual ensemble of exhausted intellectuals and emotionally unavailable dreamers performing discordant fugues across fractured institutions. Somewhere between score and screed, the project asks whether erudition can be weaponized, mourned, or merely aestheticized in the ruins—playing not music, but memory, bureaucracy, and beautifully misfiled grief.
VIEW SID KAUNG SETT LIN’S SELECTED PROJECTS