The Artists Fighting for a Different Future in Myanmar
From re-interpreting protest symbols to selling work to support striking civil servants, how artists are responding to the military coup
In the early hours of 1 February 2021, the Burmese military, known as the Tatmawdaw, arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) leadership in the Myanmar capital of Naypyitaw. On that morning, whatever future the people of Myanmar imagined for themselves was gone. As historian and political commentator Thant Myint U has observed, the coup was supposed to be a conservative reset of Myanmar’s politics but, instead, ‘may have inadvertently set off a new revolutionary era […] The country’s future is up for grabs.’