Burmese Artists During a Revolution

Interviewer: "You lived through the revolutionary period following the military coup, so you must have done a lot of revolutionary art, right?"

Artist: "I didn't draw that. I'm a pure artist, so I only drew pictures of the Buddha, of cows and nature, and of monks."

This recent image by the Burmese artist JMP fast-forwards some years into the future to imagine a post-Tatmadaw country where the democratic forces have won. A reporter is interviewing an artist about his work during the revolutionary period, asking how he used his talents to support the democratic movement. Instead, the artist, who is holding a painting of what looks to be Bagan, claims himself as a "pure artist," and goes on to say that he only painted traditional scenes of landscape, animals, and religious iconography.

This cartoon touches on many themes, from the role of the artist during revolutionary times to the prevalence of religious themes in Buddhist Burma, even when they become divorced from the acute needs of the people. In Myanmar today, people are more than aware as to which artists, influencers, celebrities, and others are sacrificing their own comfort and livelihoods to help the cause of a federal democracy where the Tatmadaw is destroyed; and on the other hand, those whose minds continue to be stuck in past forms of conventional thinking, and who don't see this current struggle as one close to their heart. With this in mind, JMP is criticizing those artists today (and by extension, people from other fields who perhaps share that thinking) who are not using their talents and skills to support the people during this critical time, but instead benefit from the sacrifices of others while not pushing society to think and look in new ways-- a role that artists the world over have seen as their defining characteristic.