Canvas:
Traditional Burmese fabric forms the foundation of this work. Fabric is treated not merely as material, but as a site of social struggle—carrying embedded histories of femininity, labor, and cultural expectation. Its patterned surface holds both domestic familiarity and political weight.
Technique:
Acrylic paint is layered with newspaper and photographic collage directly onto the fabric. Archival images and printed media are integrated into the painted figure, allowing texture, image, and textile to coexist. The visible fabric pattern interrupts the composition, resisting visual harmony and reinforcing tension between control and agency.
Process:
Through layering, cutting, and reassembling historical materials, the work links past and present experiences of women in Myanmar. The process reflects how political violence, memory, and gendered expectations are absorbed into the body and carried forward across generations.
Artwork Description:
Sovereign Stitches centers on the tension between surface and body, history and presence. The background is formed by traditional Burmese fabric, its patterned rhythm asserting cultural continuity while simultaneously framing the figure within inherited systems of order and expectation. The textile is not decorative; it functions as a structural force that shapes how the body appears and is read.
In the foreground, a painted woman stands in quiet confrontation with a second figure constructed from newspaper and archival photographs. This newspaper woman emerges as a shadowed extension—an accumulation of past lives, historical events, and collective memory pressed against the present body. Together, they suggest how women carry history not behind them, but within them.
The juxtaposition of fabric, painted flesh, and collaged newsprint reveals how identity is stitched from multiple forces: tradition, political violence, and personal resilience. The work reflects on how women exist between visibility and erasure—held in place by cultural patterns while continuously negotiating space for agency and self-definition.
This painting is currently exhibited at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center (BACC). The work is available for reservation only, with collection beginning February 2024. For reservations, please contact via email.
