I had another very rewarding experience at Space 7-10 at Kefa Café, 963 Bonifant St. in Silver Spring, MD. (Two blocks from Silver Spring Metro).
Here are some photos that I took midway through the show.
I love best – Lady Vanda on the wall next to the door,
and the impromptu “painting” made when I lifted my camera just as a delivery truck parked outside.
The captions by Bijan C. Bayne were also a great success.
Ababe, joint owner of Kefa together with her sister Lene, said, “The captions make you wish to go on to the next painting, and see what (it) says.” She also added, “They make you look at the painting, and then think, and then look at the painting again.”
To be truthful, they were a great surprise to me. After I invited Bijan to write the captions about three months ago, I purposely tried not to talk about the portraits. Nor did I think about them much until Audrey Dutton at The Gazette and Ying-Ju Lai at Asian Fortune interviewed me about the show. Both correspondents, interestingly, look on them as “human rights portraits” – and so did some of my Burma and arts colleagues.
To me, they are fictional creations, much like the fictional characters in my novels, short stories and, sometimes, in my poetry. I’d like them to be seen as human and humane, and then of course as having something to do with human rights. I am surprised that no one up till now has seen that “Min Gun, Revolutionary,” whom I named after the big bell at Mingun in N. Burma, has no arms inside the empty short sleeves of his light blue shirt and so could be a land mine victim. I only noticed it myself a while ago.
So it should not have surprised me when Bijan came up with serious one liners, that seem to bore into the soul of the “people” depicted on canvas. I had expected him to write funny, somewhat longer captions, perhaps to offset the seriousness of all the portraits. For instance, none of them smile, and a friend in Thailand who gave me permission to paint from her photograph, did not recognize herself. I seem to have taken everyone’s smile away, but that may be because I can’t paint teeth. J In all the stone friezes portraying apsaras or heavenly spirits (nats in Burmese) at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, there is said to be only one apsara who is smiling and showing her even little teeth.
Amy Kincaid, who directs Space 7-10 said, “Kyi is funny as well as serious,” and Mary Thomas, who with her husband Tom Thomas, regularly attends my Salon there, said, “”But there’s nothing funny about the portraits.”
And indeed there isn’t.
Bijan with his characteristic modesty, shrugs and says, “It’s just a reaction to the paintings. If someone else had written them, they would be different.”
“It’s all perception,” Tom Thomas says.
*
We Burmese, on the other hand, are known for our insouciance. We are always laughing and smiling, which has caused some reporters to conclude that we must be happy people and there are no human rights abuses in Burma. I myself think we laugh and smile and tell jokes, the more nervous and afraid we get. I remember my aunt’s husband, Uncle U Tint, telling jokes frantically the night after my father’s funeral, in an attempt, I think, to cheer me up. So as to appreciate the all out-effort he was making, I laughed.
My aunt then said, “She’s so young, she doesn’t understand.”
But of course I did.
*
All Words and Images on this Blog copyright Kyi May Kaung, unless specifically attributed. Mirroring and plagiarizing prohibited.
The captions by Bijan C. Bayne were also a great success.
Ababe, joint owner of Kefa together with her sister Lene, said, “The captions make you wish to go on to the next painting, and see what (it) says.” She also added, “They make you look at the painting, and then think, and then look at the painting again.”
To be truthful, they were a great surprise to me. After I invited Bijan to write the captions about three months ago, I purposely tried not to talk about the portraits. Nor did I think about them much until Audrey Dutton at The Gazette and Ying-Ju Lai at Asian Fortune interviewed me about the show. Both correspondents, interestingly, look on them as “human rights portraits” – and so did some of my Burma and arts colleagues.
To me, they are fictional creations, much like the fictional characters in my novels, short stories and, sometimes, in my poetry. I’d like them to be seen as human and humane, and then of course as having something to do with human rights. I am surprised that no one up till now has seen that “Min Gun, Revolutionary,” whom I named after the big bell at Mingun in N. Burma, has no arms inside the empty short sleeves of his light blue shirt and so could be a land mine victim. I only noticed it myself a while ago.
So it should not have surprised me when Bijan came up with serious one liners, that seem to bore into the soul of the “people” depicted on canvas. I had expected him to write funny, somewhat longer captions, perhaps to offset the seriousness of all the portraits. For instance, none of them smile, and a friend in Thailand who gave me permission to paint from her photograph, did not recognize herself. I seem to have taken everyone’s smile away, but that may be because I can’t paint teeth. J In all the stone friezes portraying apsaras or heavenly spirits (nats in Burmese) at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, there is said to be only one apsara who is smiling and showing her even little teeth.
Amy Kincaid, who directs Space 7-10 said, “Kyi is funny as well as serious,” and Mary Thomas, who with her husband Tom Thomas, regularly attends my Salon there, said, “”But there’s nothing funny about the portraits.”
And indeed there isn’t.
Bijan with his characteristic modesty, shrugs and says, “It’s just a reaction to the paintings. If someone else had written them, they would be different.”
“It’s all perception,” Tom Thomas says.
*
We Burmese, on the other hand, are known for our insouciance. We are always laughing and smiling, which has caused some reporters to conclude that we must be happy people and there are no human rights abuses in Burma. I myself think we laugh and smile and tell jokes, the more nervous and afraid we get. I remember my aunt’s husband, Uncle U Tint, telling jokes frantically the night after my father’s funeral, in an attempt, I think, to cheer me up. So as to appreciate the all out-effort he was making, I laughed.
My aunt then said, “She’s so young, she doesn’t understand.”
But of course I did.
*
All Words and Images on this Blog copyright Kyi May Kaung, unless specifically attributed. Mirroring and plagiarizing prohibited.
