Untitled (Booksellers)

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

This painting is part of a series in which the artist focused on Yangon street scenes and pavement peddlers in particular. Here, he captured a disappearing scene of street vendors selling old books along a thoroughfare colloquially known as the university of the street. The artist himself spent much of his school years working with the booksellers, harbouring fond memories of the place.

Min Kyaw Swar (b. 1988, Taungoo, Bago Region) graduated from the State School of Fine Arts in Yangon in 2012. He also studied under U Pe Nyunt Wai and U Win Pe.

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.