Maung Day

August 2 – 16 2012

maung-mad-drawing

Maung Day is a writer who has maintained a less known practice in drawing. Oligarchic Weather is his first solo exhibition of works on paper in Thailand.

Suggesting the aesthetic of outsider art, Day’s imagery is iconic and influenced by narratives and parables from Myanmar folklore and Buddhist beliefs. He transforms his sources to weirdly idiosyncratic and compelling affect.

The title Oligarchic Weather is an oxymoronic reference to fixity and change: the powerful elitism of the former juxtaposed with the inevitable unpredictability of the latter. Day is interested in how change can be affected for the superstructures of our lives. His works provoke, explore and challenge to newer understandings, unsettling conventional abstractions of collective belief including ideas of love and self.

Maung Day is a Myanmar-born poet, editor and visual and performing artist based in Bangkok where he works for Spirit in Education Movement, an NGO founded by Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa. Day graduated from the Institute of Technology in Thanlyin and Dagon University in Yangon, was an editor of Alinka Wutyi music journal and also edited Han Thit literary magazine and the art magazine Pan, amongst others. He has published two books of poetry, Surplus Biology (The Eras 2011) and Pleasure Sea (Kyaw Mhway 2006) and a third is forthcoming. Maung’s translations include The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He co-founded the celebrated Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Myanmar in 2008 and his performance works have been showcased internationally.