Currently showing

Holding Hope

Purpose of this exhibition
Why an exhibition about holding hope?

Why an exhibition about holding hope? We use the concept of “holding hope” to signify the creation of a safe space where artists share their stories and ask the audience to use the artwork to find solace and help the communal healing process. Art becomes the safe place for the audience to feel, build strength and resilience through these difficult times. Although art and dialogue alone cannot tackle injustice and structural inequalities, it can empower and inspire those who are working towards a solution to the crises. Looking back at history, during times of repression, youth, activists and artists managed to make their presence felt in the public space despite the challenges they faced — their voices raised as they contested the principles of war, destruction and authoritarianism. This exhibition aims to encourage people to contribute to their civic space with their opinions, and to think critically about themselves, their communities and the what is possible to achieve at a time of adversity. The exhibition shows that despite the multiple injustices, the fraying of trust and humanity resulting from the ongoing violence and insecurity, Myanmar people continue working towards a better future.

Looking back at history, youth, activists and artists managed to make their presence felt despite the challenges they faced. Hope drove their involvement in these important discussions. Today, hope continues to be the crucial element that inspires and energises movements that long for social transformation.

This exhibition shows that despite the multiple injustices, people in Myanmar continue hoping and working towards a better future. The artists in this exhibition share with us the different views on what is possible to achieve at a time of adversity. Each artist understands hope in a different way. Despite differences, they all show how art and culture are a safer haven against all the injustices around us by allowing us to question and think freely.

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Where Are You From? Now? Going?
Names Uncalled
Solidarity & Resistance
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Never Surrender

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A warrior who never gives up even in his death

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WAke WAke

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Alien

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Shadow of Darkness

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Although the time files

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Resilience 1

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Resilience 2

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We will Rise Up

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Like a Phoenix

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Disobedient Padauk

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Struggling for Freedom

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Resilience

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Burma Hsaing Waing

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Why am I here?

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Memorable moment

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Till We Die

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For a better future

Hope is a complex emotion: Hope allows us to overcome the obstacles by helping us to cope with the realities of a frustrating present. Hope leads to imaginations, expectations, and utopian fantasies that can make the present being felt “as a heavy weight”. Hope also has an element of optimism, no matter what kind of repression people are subjected to, they believe they will survive. Hope is what allows people to operate despite repressive times.

In the photo series “Immortal Dreams”, an artist’s collective share their private hopes in  private places, backs turned in an act of vulnerability, inviting the viewer to share in their innermost thoughts and maybe even to “make them a reality.
Immortal Dreams
A walk down memory lane. Sometimes I reminisce about the good old days. Back when the nights were free and as deep as the conversations. Back when we could stop and smell the flowers. Back when we could call the future ours.
Reminiscing
Hope as an alternate reality.
A diary is just like a memory. It records and stores information. Now all those memories inside the diary are being hurled into artworks that will tell the stories of the artist's life.
2021 art diary
Memories become nightmares. When will this end?As we walk through these nightmares, we cannot make and keep new memories unless we wake up from this cycle.But these nightmares we're in are the reality of our lives for now.
Surreal Burma
Hope as an alternate reality.
The things we learned when we were young, were they wrong or right? Were we brought up with deceiving schemes or were we brought up with the truth? Ask yourself what memory you have to examine.
What we remember,when we remember
Being in the dark doesn't mean we cannot move forward. We may feel we are stumbling around in. the dark, losing direction, but when we bump into another person in the dark, the light works its way through the dark.
US

Short Stories

A Sun's Journey

Thurein participated in month-long, peaceful protests against the latest military coup in Myanmar. Fleeing the junta’s extremely violent crackdown, he found himself hiding in a military-owned mill, where he met a mysterious old man who fed him, protected him, and shared his feelings. Thurein later discovered the destinies of both that man and himself.

English
Myanmar

Train

After joining the Civil Disobedience Movement, U Set Gaung leaves his train at Mandalay Station and moves in with his daughter. By day he sells noodles. At night, he dreams of a future when he is back on his train, with his grandson by his side. But in the end, learns that sometimes, dreams never end.

English
Myanmar
Hope as temporal.
Hope is expressed as something beyond the limits of the present. It is articulated as imagined futures, and to look to the future.

Art, through the production of images and texts, reflects the view of hope as “the wish for something to become true”. This makes hope something very concrete, even what the artist wish will become true may lie in the realm of the uncertain.This animated poem reading explores the nature of hope (and hopelessness) and the human condition in Buddhist reincarnation philosophy. What can we do when hope, like our lives, is temporal but circular like a city’s circuit train?
Stuck in the train
Hope is a complex emotion:
The artwork, originally produced in 2016, was an exploration of the State’s use of symbols to continue oppression. The cosmetic adoption of a new flag with the false narrative of “new beginnings” is used as a suffocating garment in this art piece; the tokenism of a “new Myanmar” as a symbol of democracy, religion, or freedom was, and is, a lie — the recent escalation of violent crackdowns in the country is just more evidence of this. The artist wishes this piece serves as a reminder that the way forward lies in everyone grappling with fundamental questions about the country, and to be wary of cosmetic “solutions” to its current problems.
WHAT WE NEED
Purple ribbon
Hope as temporal.
This song takes inspiration from the artist’s conviction that the very act of prayer works as a weapon against all forms of injustice, hate, and violence; that the path forward is only achieved through a better understanding of each other, a message that uplifts and guides all the peoples in Myanmar to a collective consciousness for good. And with the act of this prayer, through song, the artist hopes that she touches and moves our human spirit.
Prayer for Myanmar
Hope is a complex emotion:
In this mixed media project, the artist spent time in 2012 documenting the lives of the semi-permanent residents of an IDP camp, capturing with his camera intimate moments of daily life in a camp such as this. Ten years later, in 2022, the camp is still there, and the photographer returns. This time, he projects photographs of their lives ten years ago onto the “temporary” houses of people still in the camp and the photographer shares back some of their hopes, captured in a still image of themselves so many years ago — their smiles, their lives, and other small moments. It is a powerful call to compare and bring to light the continued hope from displaced peoples, contrasted with the tragic, enduring nature of their camps.
False Promises
Black ribbon
Hope as temporal.
At first glance, this animation is a simple story about a post-apocalyptic Earth, after an apparent nuclear war. We follow our protagonist traveling through a Myanmar wasteland, and see glimpses of what might have caused all the destruction — an arms race and holding on to old army ideologies. The protagonists mission looks clear cut; they are there to take a painting, as a preservation of art and culture, maybe for the protagonist’s home world, and during the extraction they encounter a monster. But all isn’t what it seems… The animation questions our own decisions in the threat of escalating violence, as the “monster” holds up a mirror for self-reflection, and we must grapple with what is at stake in our current struggle.
After Earth
Green Ribbon
Hope is a complex emotion:
In this photography series, the artist-activist juxtaposes a series of photographs opposite each other: on the one side, the audience is invited to witness the activist’s time spent armed-training in the liberated areas — a response to the violent crackdown and lethal oppression during the country’s initial peaceful protests (many young people would go on and do the same); on the other, their identity hidden still by a full-body suit with the tri-colour of Myanmar’s latest flag, the artist confronts the camera holding various objects (and in various locations), expressing through them symbolisms of hope, federalism and the struggle for true freedom and justice in the country.
The best is yet to come
Hope as an alternate reality.
Hope as an alternate reality. When artists depict their wish for something to be true, they are expressing something concrete and precise, even when their wishes lie in the realms of uncertainty.

In this multimedia performance, the artist documents their feelings of uncertainty over the past year in a painting, literally putting hope and hopelessness in opposition to each other, flipped on canvas. The resolution — both a release and a metaphor to symoblise a “new beginning” — comes as they burn their art on camera.
A new chapter
Hope as solidarity.
Hope as solidarity. Rejecting the current oppressive climate, youth, activists, and artists are refusing to leave the public space. Their resilience becomes a public declaration of hope for Myanmar’s future, and a wellspring for those who want to express solidarity and alliances.

In this piece the artist reminds the viewers of the heavy prices being paid in the ongoing struggle, and the clash between the thin veneer of people’s daily lives as they continue living and the undercurrent of the fight, bubbling underneath in unspoken words between friends.
Neverland

Inspired by the complex emotions experienced in their escape from Yangon across the Thai border with the help of human traffickers, this live performance explores the tension between the two forces influencing the artist’s journey — Dhamma, cosmic law and order, and Adhamma, cosmic injustice and disorder.


As our conclusive piece, we invite the viewer to take a few moments to participate in this piece: to listen, to meditate and to ponder.

No Metta For Adhamma

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