Inaugurated just a week after the anniversary of the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Fighting Fear II: Needless to say showcases the work of nine Burmese artists in the intimate space of a home gallery in Newtown—16albermarle. It is a sequel to the 2021 exhibition, Fighting fear: #whatshappinginmyanmar, curated by Nathalie Johnston and Sid Kaung Sett Lin, directors of the Yangon-based Myanm/art project space. Those familiar with the previous exhibition may recall a fiercely irreverent display of posters saturated in revolutionary shades of red, a color whose use had been banned by the government. Two years later, Nathalie and Sid present the second installment of fighting fearthat changes shape and mood.
Since our last meeting, lives have been shaken, some displaced. In a sense, the exhibition is a much-needed update. We learn that many artists have fled the country, while others have found refuge on the outskirts of the state, and a couple have stayed. The time elapsed and the distance covered is palpable in the artistic practices exhibited. The immediacy of the protest images now gives way to stories of memory, resilience and survival, many told from afar. fighting fear II it reminds us that the revolution also takes place and continues in the granular aspects and movements of the everyday.
Emily Phyo, for example, shares photos documenting her escape from Myanmar across the Thai border to Austin, Texas in the United States. Selected Works From Emily’s Latest Social Media Project Posts #Answer365 (2021-22) are placed next to a set of more recent photographs marking the beginning of #BeEmily (2023–ongoing). Despite the rather clear shift from framed portraits with the three-finger salute to tender vignettes of everyday life blurring and blurring, many of the photographs for the two projects were taken within the span of just a few days. Perhaps it is not so much indicative of an abrupt change in focus, but more of a reformulation of perspective.
A response from Yangon is found in the photos and screenshots of Soe Yu Nwe’s Instagram posts, which accompany her drawings in response to the 2021 coup. They capture moments of joy, frustration, fear and confusion. We see hands at work in Soe’s clay art studio, Studio Nwe, and low-quality images of flooded streets and traffic. A calico cat sleeps peacefully in one image, and another contains nothing but desperate remarks about the rising cost of living, power shortages, and widespread crime. There’s something strangely familiar and surprisingly authentic about these cellphone photos hanging in the hallway—it’s as if they could pop up at any moment on our Instagram feeds—that eat away at the perceived gap between artist and viewer, between Sydney and Yangon. .
Image: Kaung Su, Untitled #4 2022, inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl photo paper, 15 x 20 inches
This impulse to document connects the works in the exhibition. Min Ma Naing collects and combines photographs taken immediately after the 2021 coup to form anonymous portraits of protesters in faces of change. Quotations collected from ad hoc interviews replace conventional wall texts, keeping work life as an ongoing process of reconstructing, revising, and passing on stories and memories. And yet the anger and pain do not dissipate. Red dirty Kaung Su red paint series (2022) documenting the red paint protests of April 2021. Almost corrosively, the pigment stains the urban landscape, seeping into cracks in tiled sidewalks, hurled hard against barricades and road curbs. It evokes images of bloodshed and loss, a tension between violent presence and absence that pierces the photographic surface.
Image: Maung Day, Lost Children 3 2022, inkjet print on matte poster paper, 21 x 29.7 cm
The role of photography in fighting fear II, however, it does not totally dwarf the variety of art media on display. Maung Day’s small and seemingly joyful prints contain and convey monumental tragedies, accompanied by somber poems that mourn a lost generation haunted by years of political turmoil and violence. The vivid and stylized illustrations of Bart Was Not Here (Kyaw Moe Khine) amalgamate intertextual references and images to serve up provocative critiques of the military regime, while Richie Nath pays his haunting tribute to the victims of the mass burning and looting of the Rohingya villages in oil, gouache and ink.
Image: 882021, Generational Curse 2022, inkjet print on matte poster paper, 120 x 120 cm
Adjacent to the stairwell is the largest single print in the exhibition, made specifically for the exhibition. The artist takes the pen name 882021, which refers both to the hexadecimal color #882021, a deep garnet resembling aged blood, and to the national protests that erupted in 1988 and again in 2021. 882021’s interest in the cyclical pattern of political unrest and trauma in Burmese history translates to his illustration of a Saṃsāra in generational curse. It is both a picture of suffering and an expression of hope; The invocation of 882021 from Saṃsāra hints at eventual emancipation.
In addition to their interlocking themes and motifs, gallery visitors may notice another common feature that unites the works on display. This is an exhibition (almost) entirely made up of inkjet prints, with the exception of Soe’s two drawings, which were first shown as prints in 2021. This is not a fluke, nor a clipping, but an essential requirement. Urgency and necessity are embedded in the medium itself and in the ways in which it lends itself to reproduction and dissemination. All artworks were originally assembled in Myanm/art, Yangon by the curators and artists, then shipped, downloaded, printed and edited in Sydney. The choice of medium is a method of survival.
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This is made clearer in a series of photographs taken by an anonymous artist, occupying the full length of a twenty-foot-long wall in front of the gallery entrance. Anonymous sends these photos from Kachin State in northern Burma, where the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has joined forces with the People’s Defense Force (PDF) to form armed resistance against the military junta. Of the nine photos displayed in the gallery, only three have been reproduced online and in catalogs to preserve the anonymity of the photographic subjects. Once again, these are works of art produced and distributed at unimaginable risks. Perhaps it is our knowledge of this fact that adds to the poignant image of a young man playing the violin in a soldiers camp, the first in the line of photographs on the wall: it is an image shared like a secret, out in the open. . only in the space we are in.
My final point of praise is the exhibition’s inseparable connection to the now: a sharpness and quickness in responding to events in real time that is often overridden by the slow-turning wheel of academia and institutions. Over the course of the exhibition’s six and a half weeks, 16albermarle hosted a series of public programs that offered the project space to Sydney’s Burmese community. On March 4, the public was invited to a discussion between Burmese-Australian activist Mon Zin and Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA Executive Officer Kate Lee, moderated by Dr Susan Banki from the University of Sydney. At the opening of the exhibition, filmmaker The Khit Nay spoke about the vitality of artists in the revolution as image makers and documentarians of resistance, as the last to be recognized in times of political stability and the first to be persecuted in times of political agitation. . He is joined by cultural worker Khin Thu Thu, who translates for the audience and urges the artists’ continued support. A nearby table is generously laden with plates of wholesale (fermented tea leaf salad) and other delicious foods, prepared and served by Ma Ei Nu, the owner of a grocery store called Golden Mandalay in Auburn. As we eat, talk, listen and watch, we are reminded that questions about how to protest invariably lead to questions about how to show solidarity.
Fighting Fear II: Needless to say was a fundraising exhibition that ran at 16albermarle in Newtown from February 8, 2023 to March 25, 2023. Artwork can be purchased printed to order and all proceeds will go to the artists after deducting the printing costs.
The next exhibition at 16albermarle Project Space will be Ghosts of the past by Indonesian artists Enka Komariah and Ipeh Nur, from April 15 to May 20, 2023.
