The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

75 ARTISTS Top: A monk demonstrating during the 2007 Saffron Revolution / Photograph: Law Eh Soe / Image courtesy: The artist Below: Thabeik Hmauq (detail) 2017 Monk’s bowls, cotton rope / Installed dimensions variable / Courtesy: The artist Born 1966, Ingapu, Myanmar Lives and works in Yangon, Myanmar ‘The lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud.’ 1 Htein Lin’s art practice largely developed during his incarceration as a political prisoner, at a time when Myanmar had fallen under military dictatorship. From behind bars, he continuously created — it became a way to record, share, and, perhaps, to find some meaning in what he witnessed. Following his release, his art continues to be a tool of activism and to convey the challenging realities of Myanmar to the world. As a student, Htein Lin participated in Myanmar’s 8888 Uprising, the 1988 pro-democracy movement that became a pivotal event in the country’s history. Subsequently, he went underground, spending years in refugee and rebel camps in the border regions, where he was then taken prisoner by a student revolutionary group in 1991. The following year, he managed to escape, but he was detained again in 1998 by the military government, and accused of anti-government activities. During seven years of incarceration, including time in Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison, he carved soap bars, painted on prison uniforms, and used smuggled materials and whatever was at hand — pill packets, broken glass, plastic, razor blades, plates, cigarette lighters — in order to create. Thabeik Hmauq 2017 is an installation in which 108 alms bowls take the place of small rosary beads to construct an immense Buddhist rosary. Alms bowls and rosaries are ubiquitous objects in Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist society — rosaries are found in almost every house, and alms bowls are one of the few objects owned by Buddhist monks. The work represents the disjuncture of Burmese society, the instrumental role Buddhism continues to play in political and social spheres, and the artist’s practice of faith throughout turbulent experiences. Buddhism has played an important role in Htein Lin’s life, particularly those periods spent as a practising monk. In prison, he was stripped of his faith and deprived of objects, such as his prayer beads, which led him to fashion his own from scraps of old prison uniforms. His improvised rosaries feature in his secret paintings of 2001–04, and were usually printed using the top of a toothpaste tube, or the lid of a medicine bottle, onto the prison uniform. 2 ‘Thabeik’ is a word for alms bowl and ‘Hmauq’ is the word for upturn; the phrase has come to denote a boycott or strike, and developed from the act of a monk refusing to accept alms and so denying a person an opportunity for spiritual merit — a transaction highly valued in Burmese society. In the past, the provocative gesture was carried out by monks against Burmese kings, and as a form of protest dating back to the anti-colonial demonstrations of 1920. 3 Monks holding alms bowls over their heads became iconic images of the 2007 Saffron Revolution against the military junta, and in earlier demonstrations in 1990, in which a widespread refusal to take alms from the military denied soldiers the associated virtue. 4 In Htein Lin’s installation, each alms bowl is pierced at the bottom, highlighting the large numbers of monks who have been killed in these conflicts. The artist also laments the instrumentalisation of Buddhism by fundamentalist groups, which claim to protect Buddhist Myanmar from the encroachment of Islam. 5 Such groups have been accused of being implicated in various conflicts, including inciting hatred and violence towards the Muslim Rohingya people. With Thabeik Hmauq , Htein Lin highlights the allegory and symbolism these Buddhist objects have come to possess. Although they are a source of meditation, healing, resistance and protection, these objects can also represent ideologies capable of inciting hatred and violence, threatening the fundamental principles they seek to impart. Tarun Nagesh Endnotes 1 Buddhist proverb. 2 Htein Lin, artist statement supplied to the author, 27 December 2017. 3 Htein Lin, email to the author, 18 April 2018. 4 Artist statement, 2017. 5 Artist statement, 2017. HTEIN LIN