Aung San Suu Kyi

Credit Line: Gift of Ian Holliday 2023, Collection of SMU

Kin Maung Yin began painting a series of Aung San Suu Kyi portraits in 2008 when the democracy leader was under house arrest and well before reforms in Myanmar saw an explosion of political art celebrating The Lady and the memory of her iconic father, General Aung San.

An architect by training, self-taught artist Kin Maung Yin (1938-2014, Yangon) is widely regarded as one of the leading figures of Burmese modernism. After a short stint as a railroad engineer, he threw himself into art making in the 1960s, producing wildly semi-abstract paintings that earned him a place in the Burmese pantheon of modernist pioneers. Influential and much beloved by the art community, the artist is best known for portraitures, which over the years gained increasing affinity with Italian modernist Modigliani's elongated figures with mask-like faces.

The SMU Art Collection has over 70 paintings from Myanmar donated by Ian Holliday. A specialist in Burmese politics, Holliday assembled the Thukhuma Collection which comprises of Burmese paintings largely dating from the transitional decade of the 2010s, presenting multiple artistic perspectives on a society in reform. On display at School of Social Sciences and Li Ka Shing Library, the gifted paintings depict the people, culture and land, from the streets of Yangon and rural peripheries to political icons and indigenous deities.