Contemporary Asian Artist VI
Freedom in Blossom!: Gangaw Village and Experimental Art in 1980s Burma

The Fukuoka Asian Art Museum is pleased to present “Freedom in Blossom! : Gangaw Village and Experimental Art in 1980s Burma” as the sixth exhibition of its Contemporary Asian Artist Series.

The Contemporary Asian Artist Series features today’s leading artists in Asia and seeks to explore their outstanding creativity, and also to widely introduce artists who deal with Asian contemporary social or cultural issues in a radical manner.

This current exhibition in our series introduces “the Gangaw Village Art Group,” the first contemporary artist collective in Myanmar, which led the art scene in 1980s’ Myanmar (Burma).  Since the establishment of the group by students and graduates of the Rangoon Arts and Sciences University (the present Yangon University) in 1979, the group has been holding annual art exhibitions, in spite of some interruptions during the days of the military regime.

Since its independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar has seen tumultuous social changes including a socialist regime, a military dictatorship, and democratization movements.  In the time of the military regime, it was difficult to organize  exhibitions at all because of a shortage of information on the latest art trends from outside of the country.  Even under such constrained social conditions, it was the artists of “the Gangaw Village Art Group,” who explored new expressions and made a tenacious effort to paint freely.

The Gangaw Village has wielded the strongest influence in Burmese art since the 1980s to the present day.  The group is presented in this exhibition through 39 works by eight artists, including the history of their activities as an art collective.  We hope that this exhibition will provide our audiences a great opportunity to follow the tail of the fresh and dynamic expressions of these artists, each of whom lived through much hardship.