Queer Burmese Artists Confront Displacement

As countries unravel, stories of displacement become ubiquitous. For the young Burmese artists in ‘If only it is seen, thus, from afar’, curated by Sid Kaung Sett Lin, national turmoil has rendered them émigrés. Shuttling between temporary homes and bureaucratic institutions, they navigate a world that tends to callously politicize their trauma – and risks trivializing it. Featuring diverse mediums, including photography, film, installation and fiction, SAC Gallery’s lyrical exhibition invites audiences into a world of deferred dreams and uncertain hopes.

In a show that prioritizes self-expression over representation, several artists adopt an intimate approach. Zicky Le’s ‘Where I was, where I’m going’ (2025–ongoing) documents his search for belonging beyond borders, whether in nondescript landscapes or in candid shots of loved ones. The photographs are interspersed with childhood mementos, a labyrinth of emotive keepsakes affixed to a green wall. The wall’s hue evokes a green screen, a technique whereby any desired background can be inserted, evoking the transitory nature of life in exile. In the opposite corner, Kyaw Min Htet’s ‘I Use Him As Much As He Uses Me’ (2025–ongoing) explores the artist’s escapades with strangers in Bangkok via the melancholy nostalgia of Polaroid snapshots. Sometimes placed atop a clinical lightbox or piled forlornly on the floor, images of blurred bodies in moments of rapture and reprieve speak of sorrow, desire and ecstatic joy.

Wounds can catalyze change, and some artists in the show choose to transform through confronting traumas. Sin Hu presents Kin (2025), a pink, sutured egg assembled from faux fur, cotton and a blanket the artist used in Myanmar. Drawing on the figures of Kinnari and Kinnara – half-human, half-bird entities from Hindu-Buddhist mythology who symbolize beauty, grace and queerness – the artist envisions an identity in incubation: the being inside the egg may find its metamorphosis painful, but ultimately it will emerge anew. Utilizing a different object for self-transformation, Na Torah’s video It Is I Giving Birth to Myself – The Ritual (2025) presents the artist in dialogue with her inner masculinity. Wearing a mask, Torah paints a male dancer’s body; as she slowly transfers her mask to him, the accessory’s red threads suggesting sinewy veins, Torah merges the divided parts of her identity and embraces an internal freedom rooted in harmony.

For artists in exile, exposure may come at a cost. Opacity can offer a generative alternative. Artist and writer Min Chit Paing addresses the tendency to mindlessly consume sensational and traumatic news. His installation The Wait (2025) shows printed scripts in English, Burmese and Thai that have been connected by threads and arranged on a table. The paper is crumpled, rendering the words semi-illegible; the audience must spend time with Min’s stories to understand them. This resistance to transparency or full divulgence is echoed in filmmaker Htet Aung Lwyn’s black and white Super 8 film Celluloid Demon (2025), an experimental self-portrait inspired by Italian novelist and artist Dino Buzzati’s painting Il visitatore del mattino (The Morning Visitor, 1963). Here, Htet appears in the guise of an ominous spirit, dancing enigmatically and erratically, their body entirely covered in film strips. Ostensibly a truth-recording medium, celluloid becomes camouflage for Htet, concealing their identity. The work raises questions about film’s ability to document traumatic events while also experimenting with the medium’s self-constructing qualities. 

The artworks brought together in ‘If only it is seen, thus, from afar’ carve out a personal haven for self-expression away from external pressure to perform an identity. United by circumstance, the artists refuse any flattening of their complex stories and share a determination to tell them on their own terms.

‘If only it is seen, thus, from afar’ is on view at SAC Gallery, Bangkok until 9 August

^{Main image: Zicky Le, ‘Where I was, where I’m going’, 2025–ongoing, photographic prints on smooth pearl paper, dimensions variable. Courtesy: SAC Gallery, Bangkok and the artist}