• Issue
  • Apr 27, 2020

Sawangwongse Yawnghwe: Painting the Unstable State

Installation view of (foreground) People’s Desire, 2017-18, ceramic, wooden table, and brass plate, dimensions variable; (background) _The Myanmar Peace Industrial Complex

Since 2015, Sawangwongse Yawnghwe has been producing art under the banner of Yawnghwe Office in Exile, a fictive museum he founded while searching for alternatives to the histories propagated by state institutions. Focused on unravelling suppressed traumas and recovering personal and collective identities from the neglected margins, the painter has an antagonistic relationship to hegemonic state narratives, one that is rooted in his familial past.


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