Graffiti artists thrive in reform-era Myanmar

Sun Aug 26, 2012 5:39pm EDT

1 of 3. Street artists spray-paint graffiti on a wall under a bridge beside a railway line in Yangon August 25, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun

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By Andrew R.C. Marshall



Aung, who requested that his full name be withheld, belongs to a new generation of Yangon street artists whose often politically charged graffiti was almost unthinkable before Myanmar's recent burst of reforms.

For decades Myanmar was a dictatorship where pervasive surveillance by military spies meant even "tagging", the quickly drawn signature found in graffiti worldwide, was too risky. That began to change when a semi-civilian government took power in March 2011.




"Most young people just do tagging, which I don't like much," says Aung. "It has no ideology."

His hero is the celebrated British activist Banksy, whose often tongue-in-cheek work takes aim at war, poverty and the snobbery of the art world. Aung was hooked after watching Banksy's Academy Award-nominated documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop".

"I liked his political thinking," he says. "I realized I couldn't say everything I wanted through art, but I could say it through graffiti."



Graffiti of an electrical socket trailing a wire, usually accompanied by the slogan "Plug the city", became common in Yangon in May, when frustration over chronic power shortages led to nationwide protests.

"We didn't do it on the people's behalf, but because we ourselves were affected by the lack of electricity," says Twotwenty, 27, the pseudonym for a member of the collective Yangon Street Art, known by its plump, multicolored tag "YSA".

Only 25 percent of Myanmar's 60-million population has access to the national grid, according to the World Bank.


Much of Yangon's graffiti is in English and the tone ranges from the profane - "Fuck snitches!" - to the polite: "Dear Mr President", reads a rambling plea for more electricity scrawled across a shopfront. "We need enough power ... with all due respect, Sir, we don't have that."

"Zoo, or animal prison?" asks graffito on the wall of Yangon Zoological Garden, faintly recalling a message supposedly written by Banksy on London Zoo's penguin enclosure: "We're bored of fish."

Aung's winged television set often appears with the slogan "FOR UR RIGHT."


Like critics of graffiti everywhere, ordinary residents of the already run-down city find it hard to distinguish between street art and vandalism. "Most people don't know much about this art and the owners of the places where we graffiti are still very sensitive about this," said Aung.




"All of us try to draw on this wall," says Aung. "It's painted over the next day."



"A security guard is always watching," explains Aung.

Some Yangon artists are now experimenting with stencils, a form popularized by Banksy. Aung recently sprayed an image of General Aung San, Myanmar's national hero and the father of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on a ruling party signboard. It was quickly erased.

Not every flat surface is fair game. There is an unwritten code to stay clear of schools, hospitals and religious buildings. The monastery-clogged streets around the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's most revered Buddhist site, are conspicuously devoid of graffiti.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

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