Survival

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

This artwork is part of 25x25 Campus Art Tour.

Listen to the audio description of the artwork here.

Transcript:

The painting shows a close-up view of seven women farmers on a paddy field. The paddy field is a golden yellow, a sign that the rice crop is mature and ready to be harvested. The farmers are bent over the field cutting away bundles of rice stalks by the handful. Their faces are shielded from the elements, and hidden from the viewer, by straw hats that shine the same golden yellow as the paddy field. The conical shape of the gold straw hats echoes the shape and colour of the stupas that are deeply revered in the country and dot its landscape. The image is overlaid by coarse vertical striations of golden yellow which gives the painting an aged and weathered quality that reflects the farmers' struggle for survival.

This painting is part of a series titled Survival. In the series, the artist Dawei Lay predominantly depicts the physically demanding agricultural work undertaken by women. Coming from a family of farmers from the rice-growing Tanintharyi Region, Dawei Lay is both appreciative of the nurturing labour of farming and sympathetic to the plight of farmers affected by the land and economic policies of different governments.

Dawei Lay shares his observations:

"There are fewer men in the villages now. They went to foreign countries such as Malaysia to find jobs. So today there are no real workers in the village. Instead, their wives have to manage the farms. That's why my paintings usually feature women… Farmers continue to have a hard time making ends meet. We're a family of farmers, including my grandparents. They keep themselves occupied with farming and they hardly ever had a good year. They just keep working for their bellies."

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Dawei Lay (b. 1982, Tanintharyi Region) graduated from Yangon's State School of Fine Arts in 2001. Since becoming a full-time artist in 2010, the artist has worked almost exclusively on the theme of women farm workers through two series titled Women Power and Survival. Coming from a family of farmers, Dawei Lay is both appreciative of the nurturing labour of farming and sympathetic to the plight of farmers in the face of military land grabs under the U Thein Sein government.

In the series Survival, his paintings predominantly depict the physically demanding agricultural work undertaken by women, as they are shielded from the elements by straw conical hats. Painted with faux wood grain textures and vertical striations to create a deliberate ruggedness, the landscape exudes an aged and weathered quality.

The SMU Art Collection has over 300 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.