19 Oct 2008

HTEIN LIN exhibition at Museo del Carcere 'Le Nuove'

Htein Lin. Serie N. 00235 is the first Italian solo show of the leading contemporary Burmese artist Htein Lin (Ingapu, Myanmar, 1966).

The exhibition gathers works made by the artist under his detention as political prisoner when he was charged – falsely - with planning opposition protests and sentenced to seven years. In this period, the act of performing and painting becomes strategies of survival for the artist who creates a corpus of over 300 pictures and 1.000 illustrations. These works are an unique and important testimony of the life in the Myanmar's jails (ex Burma), a country ruled by an authoritarian and repressive regime.

To keep on painting while in jail, Htein Lin uses any means as varnishes smuggled by the watches, syringes instead of paintbrushes, lighters, serving dishes, pieces of gauze, soap's blocks, getting canvases from tattered uniforms.

Htein Lin opens the door to the artistic perfomance in Burma, from 1996 with 'The Plastic Age' and 'Guitarist', street performance in the midtown of Yangon.

These works, showed for the first time in Italy, are a selection from N.00235 series, which is the prisoner number given to Htein Lin by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The artist will take part to a public panel on October 24th (11 a.m.) at the Museum of Resistance (Museo Diffuso della Resistenza, della Deportazione, della Guerra, dei Diritti e della Libertà), Quartieri Militari, Corso Valdocco, Torino. The curators and Peter Popham, correspondent for 'The Independent', will attend.

Htein Lin. Serie N. 00235 is an event of Associazione Culturale Passepartout, with the support of Regione Piemonte and the cooperation of Museo del Carcere 'Le Nuove'.

Educational project by Elena Ragusa and Luisa Romeo.

The exhibition is part of '2008: un anno per i diritti', a series of events organized by Museo Diffuso della Resistenza, della Deportazione, della Guerra, dei Diritti e della Libertà, Torino.

A special thank to Daniela Bezzi, journalist, Peter Popham, Italian correspondent for 'The Independent' and curator of the website freeaungsansuukyi.org (media partner), and Vicky Bowman.