Kyi May KaungIdentity: Mostly Burmese Monks
September 1 through October 3, 2009
Reception: Sept. 4, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Burma Update: Sept. 18, 7:10pm to 8:30pm
Words as Weapons of War, a performance piece: Sept. 25, 7:10 to 8:30pm
Identity
I belong in a different time and place I have nothing to do with you.
"During the Saffron Revolution of September 2007 in Burma, I painted these oil portraits and made these 'life extenders' of papier mache. In the viscious clampdown that followed the monks marching in the streets chanting the metta sutra, many monks were arrested and killed. The monks' leader was arrested in Nov. 07 during the UN Human Rights Rapporteur's visit. 'Life entenders' are decorated tree branches that sick people offer at Buddhist shrines to 'prop up the banyan tree.'" -- Kyi May Kaung
Kyi May Kaung has been a professional Burma watcher for over 15 years and has worked in the Burmese democracy movement overseas for over a decade. From 1997-2001 she worked as Senior Research Analyst and Broadcaster at Radio Free Asia and from 2001-2004 with The Burma Fund as Sr. Research Associate. Currently she consults about the Burmese political economy. She came to the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1982, after teaching 20 years at the Institute of Economics in Rangoon. She is on the boards of the Burmese Refugee Project and Burma Economic Watch.
A successful poet, Kyi has been painting professionally since 1999 and paints in acrylics and oils on canvas, and pencils, oil crayons, acrylics and water colors on paper. She also makes collages and 3-D constructions from found objects.
Her exhibit "Cut and Paste" is currently on display at Suriya Gallery, Huay Keaw Road, Chiangmai, Thailand. In March she had a show Splash, Drip, Pour in Ubud, Bali and showed her art also at Hotel Arthur in Helsinki in June. This is her 11th one-woman show (her first was called Flux at the Foundry Gallery in Washington, DC.); her 4th in S.E. Asia and her third in Thailand.
