The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

157 ARTISTS Naga Mae Daw serpent (details, below) 2018 Glazed porcelain, china paint, gold and mother-of-pearl lustre / 133 x 48 x 37cm (overall) / Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery Collection Born 1989, Lashio, Shan State, Myanmar Lives and works in Yangon, Myanmar Soe Yu Nwe’s porcelain serpents are decorated with jewel-like scales, their skin punctuated with vicious ‘wounds’. Breaks in the flesh reveal a tangle of red, thorn-like branches, crossed with green tendrils and white bones that gracefully curve and overlap with sharply pointed ends. In Myanmar, the goddess of serpent dragons is Naga Mae Daw, often venerated in the country’s numerous pagoda temples. Said to be of pre-Buddhist origin, she rules over magical spirits known as Nagas, transformative snake-like beings that live in rivers, lakes, oceans and in the bottom of wells. For Soe Yu Nwe, the serpent is significant personally and symbolically, representing transformation and sexuality, and drawing on the folklore and culture of Myanmar, her country of birth. Soe Yu Nwe grew up in Yangon, and completed her formal education in the United States. In 2016, she returned to Myanmar where she established a studio, creating experimental works in a country once known for its ceramic traditions. Working with clay allows the artist to express her feelings of disconnection when away from Myanmar, and to explore elements of her culture and heritage. Concerned with what it means to be female in different cultures, Soe Yu Nwe recounts how she was initially too shy to draw a full human body, particularly a nude: I’d depict the body in parts, but never a whole person. I thought it might be safer . . . When you are from another culture, you are always self-censoring. Being a woman in Burma is a bit restraining . . . You are not supposed to go out at night if you are a woman. You have to look at what you wear . . . So I think some of the anxieties in my work represent this social anxiety, personal anxiety, sexual anxiety. 1 In her works, the female body is fragmented and transformed into visceral, semi-botanical sculptures with evocative titles. Often white, with elements of raw colour, such as red, green and black, they resemble vessels formed from tangled, thorned bushes or skeletal rib cages, overgrown with weeds and flowers. In more recent works, spherical pagodas with pointed rooftops contribute to the growing number of symbolic references to Buddhism in Myanmar. In her ongoing ‘On Ghost’ series, which references a house fire, linked chains bind ashen forms that could be arms, hands or branches. Soe Yu Nwe also draws on the folklore and vernacular arts of her native country, as well as Buddhist and animistic practices. Painted wooden idols representing gods, goddesses and mythical beings; pagoda temples; marionettes; the heart-shaped leaves of the Bodhi tree; and ‘spirit houses’ — shrines built to placate the spirits of trees, forests and mountains that have been disrupted by human habitation — all inspire her practice. The serpent, tree, house, shrine and vessel are used as metaphors and as a resting place for the self. Soe Yu Nwe’s intricate ceramic works reflect her experience of the human body as fragmented and fragile, but also capable of fluidity and change. In the artist’s works, the human body and nature share the same cyclical passage of growth, wounding, decay and death, marked by desire, affection, hope, instinct and conflict. 2 Abigail Bernal Endnotes 1 Lillian Kalish, ‘Ceramic artist finds her place’, Myanmar Times , 30 September 2016, <https://www.mmtimes.com/lifestyle/22823- ceramic-artist-finds-her-place.html>, viewed May 2018. 2 Artist statement, Soe Yu Nwe , <https://www.soeyunwe.com/statement >, viewed May 2018. SOE YU NWE