(From the interview and article of LSE, UK by Sara Wong)

In creating artworks for this exhibition, Chuu Wai uses materials relating to everyday objects and practices: from fabric and textiles to woven baskets and photographs. Ubiquity is an intentional aesthetic motif in the pieces, attended to primarily through the deployment of a familiar basket-weaving technique from baskets that are used in everyday, mundane ways in Myanmar. Using this as the canvas, Chuu Wai interweaves collaged elements, paintings and fabric in the Woven series (Image 1). In doing so, the artworks ask: how might we understand the relationship between the everyday and the revolutionary? This open question, of which both the artworks and exhibition obscure obvious answers, is especially important in a political context where, over three years on since the military coup in February 2021, people across Myanmar are subject to authoritarian rule and experiences of abject violence on a daily basis. Says Chuu Wai,

I simply ask the questions in the paintings, and I hope people will ask their own questions through the paintings as well.

The visual impact of utilising this technique results in a jarring viewing experience, one where you do not quite know where to look or what you are looking at. This is intentional for the artist, who views her artwork as a kind of ‘puzzle’ or ‘game’ to be pieced together and worked through by the audience.