RANGOON — A Rubenesque ode to full-figured nude women and state media is on offer this week in downtown Rangoon, where the Burmese artist Sandar Khaing’s exhibition “The Naked Truth” opened to the public on Saturday.
The largest of these unconventional paintings depicts a woman with tree-trunk thighs seated naked on a toilet, with a copy of The Mirror—one of Burma’s three government-run daily newspapers—going some way toward censoring her bare bosom. Other works are far less discreet portraits of the female form.
The jarring imagery on display at the Cloud 31 art gallery is centered on the same overarching theme: All 34 paintings show a woman, sans clothes, reading a copy of The Mirror state mouthpiece. For some of these paintings, Sandar Khaing has pasted copies of real editions of the daily onto the canvas, making for a provocative ensemble of official state media in the hands of the obese nudes for which she has become well-known.
The exhibit is a bold foray into the risqué, even by the standards of an increasingly liberal new age of art in Burma, which has seen previously draconian censorship against the arts lifted starting in 2012.
In a particularly audacious stroke, the aforementioned woman on the toilet is reading a copy of The Mirror’s coverage of government security forces’ violent crackdown on peaceful student protestors in Letpadan, Pegu Division, in March of this year.
Hundreds of student protestors demanding changes to the country’s education system were on a march from Mandalay to Rangoon when they faced the violent crackdown by baton-wielding police some 80 miles northwest of the commercial capital. Dozens of participants were injured and more than 100 students and their supporters were detained. To date, 80 of them are still facing charges that could see them serve several years in prison.
The student protestors hit a nerve within a quasi-civilian government whose predecessors saw their dictatorial hold on power challenged multiple times over the last 50 years by pro-democracy movements that were fueled by activists on campuses across the country.
Sandar Khaing, in her early 40s, recalled the grief she felt in the aftermath of the March 10 crackdown.
“Everyone was talking about that news, inside my own home too. I feel that all of us—young, middle-aged and old—tend to plunge ourselves into the news and information every day,” said the artist.
“And when we read newspapers and other publications, we tend to read them by sitting in different places, such as a chair, sofa, bed or even on the toilet, in different postures,” she added, referring to the array of poses in which her nudes are depicted in the paintings. “This exhibition is all of that, and I would like to send that message—that in daily life, we are immersed in the age of news.”
But the artist pointed out that not all reports in newspapers and other media outlets are reliable, a particular concern when it comes to Burma’s state-owned publications.
“In my home,” she said, “we buy various newspapers and publications every day. But I just try to absorb the news after subjecting it to my own scrutiny. The Mirror is one of them, but that newspaper is one of the least trusted and most unreliable.”
The Mirror is one of Burma’s three state-run newspapers, along with Myanmar Alin and the English-language Global New Light of Myanmar. Another prominent player in Burma’s daily news cycle is Myawaddy Daily, a newspaper owned by the country’s powerful military. All of them are widely regarded as tentacles of the state’s still potent propaganda machine, stubborn vestiges of an era under Burma’s former military regime of strict censorship, and the broadcasting and publication of a torrent of pro-government exhortations.
Publication of private dailies only resumed on April 1, 2013, ending a 50-year ban on such enterprises.
But Sandar Khaing is trailblazing not only in her willingness to direct criticism at the government. Her penchant for painting nudes also runs against the grain of mainstream sensibilities in Burma’s socially conservative society.
Only in recent years has a ban on her works being displayed in the country been lifted. Her first solo show on a similar theme, titled “Nude With a Camera,” was exhibited for the first time in 2014, and marked perhaps a first of its kind for Rangoon audiences. Prior to that, her paintings were shown only outside the country.
“The Naked Truth” is open to the public through Friday. Cloud 31 is open from 9 am to 5 pm daily, at No. 49/51, first floor, on 31st Street, between Merchant and Maha Bandoola streets.
Typical asking price for one of the artist’s smaller works starts at US$300.
