Sawangwongse Yawnghwe’s paintings and sculptures offer an unflinching study of genocidal economies and what brings them into being. People’s Desire (2018) is a six-metre-long installation of 2,500 crudely modelled clay figurines – families among them – that walk or float in boats in a mass exodus. The artist called the Rohingya massacres genocidal as early as 2014, connecting them to the Karen, Kachin and Shan peoples stripped of their land and resources under military rule in the longest civil war in contemporary history.
Which Way to Land? An Open Question about Burma’s Fate (2023) and The Bed of Gold Stream (2024) rework colonial maps and photographs of the Shan minority, reclaiming land, history, resources and even copyright. In The Prince’s Manual, or: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Burma Post Coup Revolution (2024), the artist grapples with Myanmar after the 2021 coup, characterised by aerial bombardment, scorched-earth tactics, ethnic armies, and revolutionary struggle. In the two Parallax canvases, the artist leaves Burma only to encounter Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank. The Idiot’s Parallax (2025) reads as a screen, borrowing the colours of coders. It posits decolonisation as a violent event that turns outward force inward, risking self-violence. The revolutionary subject emerges as the product of both the ZONE OF NON-BEING and its violent rupture.
—Zasha Colah
