Recognised as a central figure in contemporary Myanmar art, Aung Myint works with semi-abstract paintings, installation, and performance to explore themes of memory, cultural identity, and the human condition.
Read MoreAung Myint was born in Yangon, two years before Myanmar's independence from British rule. The artist studied psychology at the Rangoon Arts and Science University, graduating in 1968.
Black, red, and white feature frequently in Aung Myint's paintings, which depict abstract compositions of swirls, geometric shapes, and auras, as well as recognisable forms.
Largely self-taught, Aung Myint painted representational works until the mid-1960s, when he met the leading abstract painter Kin Maung Yin, who was also an uncle of Aung Myint's wife. Aung Myint's experimentation with abstraction, however, suffered censorship under military rule; works including the colours black and red, for example, were excluded from exhibitions because authorities associated them with dissent.
Censorship eventually led Aung Myint to found the Inya Gallery of Art in 1989, which saw the artist open his garage in Yangon to fellow Myanmar artists. With limited access to the international art world, Aung Myint encouraged others to explore means of artistic expression beyond conventional academic or representational art.
Aung Myint's paintings negotiate elements of figuration and abstraction to explore the potential of the image to convey narratives about the world. In the painting series 'World Series', ongoing since the 1990s, depictions of the five continents are variously covered in marks that allude to war, conflict, and corruption. A pool of red paint drips over the map of the world in World Series: Five Continents - Is the World Nearly Destroyed? (2009), while alternating x's in black and red nearly bury the continents in World Series: Five Continents Filled with Errors (2010).
Aung Myint achieves a subtle harmony of line and form in 'Mother and Child', a series of drawings on paper that began in 2002. The image of a mother holding her child is rendered in bold, unbroken lines, whose proximity imply their intimate relationship.
The 'Mother and Child' drawings have been interpreted variously, from a reflection of Aung Myint's own relationship with his mother, who passed away when the artist was an infant, to his concerns with patriotism or an allusion to the Burmese alphabet in the abstracted shapes of the two figures.
Aung Myint has exhibited extensively in both Myanmar and abroad.
Solo exhibitions include A New Era, 1995—2021, Karin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong (2022); 14 A.M., TS1, Yangon (2014); C_itizen of the World: recent works by Aung Myint_, Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore (2010).
Group exhibitions include Myanmar Voices: We Are Still Here, Karin Weber Gallery (2021, online); Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2017); No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013); Art from Myanmar Today, Osage Art Foundation, Singapore (2010).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
