RANGOON — A fresh photo exhibition offers an intimate view into Burma’s LGBT community, challenging social stigma and misperceptions surrounding gender and identity in what is typically considered a conservative culture.
& Proud, a local initiative focusing on LGBT events and awareness in Burma, teamed up with Colors Rainbow and YG—which hosts the popular monthly FAB party in Rangoon—to facilitate the show with assistance from the British Council.
The LGBT, or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, community often faces discrimination in Burma, according to Hla Myat Tun of the advocacy group Colors Rainbow, which helped to organize the “& Proud LGBT Photo Exhibition” at Myanmar Deitta Gallery in downtown Rangoon.
One motivation, Hla Myat Tun explained, was that negative depictions in popular media have done a great deal to alienate and stigmatize the LGBT community. Hla Myat Tun believes that artists can reclaim power over images and change the ways people view each other.
“[Mainstream media] depicts LGBT as humiliating. We’re not shown as human, so the public doesn’t view us as human,” he said of the images he sees in popular movies, advertisements and the like. “It gives people the wrong message.”
The & Proud exhibition and photo contest was conceived as a means to repair the misleading image so often put forth in the media: one that suggests that people who identify as LGBT are inherently promiscuous and lack dignity.
The show features the work of a handful of local and international photographers, and displays a wide range of imagery. A striking series by Malaysian photographer KG Krishnan depicts gritty and intimate portraits of the faces and bodies of male-to-female transgenders. Prizes also went to artists who documented the daily life of a gay couple, a family that had two fathers and an adopted child, a playful lesbian kiss.
Photographer Khin Pearl Yuki Aung, who won first prize for the best single shot, said that while she does not identify as LGBT, she entered the contest to share her respect for people’s rights to self-identification, dignity, sexuality and expression.
“It’s nothing weird or special,” she said. “It’s about human rights. I only see that they are human and I don’t isolate someone who is LGBT.”
& Proud opened on May 16, marking the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT), observed on May 17 each year since 2004. Works will be on view until May 24. This is the second year in a row that the show has been held in Rangoon, and participation is growing. This year, & Proud also offered a photography course for aspiring local artists.
Myanmar Deitta is located upstairs at building 49 on 44th street, between Merchant and Strand roads. The gallery is open daily from 10am to 5pm.
