FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Entertainment

Female Alcoholics are Rare in Myanmar. This Young Artist is One of Them.

Yangon Artist Bay Bay uses her art to let people enter her alcohol-fueled mind.
Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 11
The artist with her muse. Photo courtesy of Nay Thet Thet Nway

Rising artist Bay Bay, 27, is a talented photographer. Her work is displayed at Myanm/art, a gallery and exhibition space in Yangon, which prides itself in promoting emerging, contemporary artists from Myanmar.

But Bay Bay was not always an artist. The engineering graduate, who specialised in electricity, also worked as a parliamentary researcher and a political journalist before she became the assistant to curator Mayco Naing, helping shoot and edit photographs.

Advertisement

Her resumé was impressive until, in December 2017, Naing let her go after finding bottles dotted around the studio and discovering she was drunk on assignment for a prestigious cultural foundation. Now scarcely able to think or eat, Bay Bay feeds her habit by stealing back the money her parents confiscate due to her drinking.

“I drink every night with my friends. It's like a cycle,” Bay Bay told VICE. “Sometimes I have depression. Other nights, I'm a prisoner, and I can't sleep, so I drink.”

Yet not even the cloudiness of being wasted can mask what Myanm/art calls her “immense artistic talent.” Her recent exhibition I Am Drunk, explores a crucial cultural dichotomy - the discrepancy between how she feels when sober and when she's hammered - as is often the case. The gallery also hosted her installation to support her journey towards sobriety, a continuous struggle for Bay Bay who has spent time in an 11-room, youth-geared rehab unit called Ngwe Kyal Son but has still found herself slipping.

1550719851814-baybay

Some of Bay Bay's artwork as displayed at Myanm/art. Photo courtesy of Marco Naing

“Many artists suffer the affliction of alcoholism. This is not a celebration of an addiction, but an honest representation of its struggle,” Myanm/art said on its website.

Indeed, despite being under the influence, her predominantly red, Miro-like pictures, which fetch $150, have an innocent side. “I like the kids' drawings, the pictures. Me too – when I'm drawing, I think like a kid,” Bay Bay said of her work.

Advertisement

Bay Bay, whose real name is Nay Thet Thet Nway, ascribes her nickname to an old Chinese family of photographers close to her mother. She's first to admit she’s “not the same as other people.” She regards Pepe, who occupies her lap while she paints, as her yellow-eyed muse. “I have so many cats, but I so love her, and when she's angry, she's like a human.”

Her spacey Instagram feed features a levitating figure, Aung San Suu Kyi with flowers coming out of her face, and a humanoid butterfly buzzing in traffic.

“I don't like landscapes. I don't like the same picture and the same drawing. I'm different,” she said.

And in Myanmar, being an alcoholic in itself makes her different.

According to the World Health Organization, Myanmar females over 15 years old drink just 1.1 liters per year, and just 0.1% are heavy, episodic drinkers. Only 0.5% have an alcohol disorder, and 91% are life-long abstainers, meaning Bay Bay is an outlier.

To make matters worse, education on alcohol abuse risks is lacking according to Frontier Myanmar, but cheap booze of iffy origin is rife, and poverty and dark memories from junta times encourage self-induced amnesia.

“I have a different life than I used to. I was so free in my life before. Within 3 years, I become a drunk, but I am a weak and shy person,” Bay Bay said in her artist’s statement. “I started to drink in order to talk more and then as medicine. I don’t think I am so in love with alcoholism but only use it to become my metabolized self. I think it’s connected with both my mental and physical problem.”

Advertisement

She started by having a beer or two in parties, but the habit gained steam. Steadily, her intake increased, spurred by a desire to feel more relaxed. In 2017, she fell into a pattern of passing out and waking drunk.

1550719872463-baybay2

Bay Bay's art explores a battle between two selves – the drunk and the sober. Photo courtesy of Marco Naing

When she has money, her choice is whisky, gin or vodka, but beer is her go-to. Big on Tiger, she consumes between 10 to 12 bottles when on a bender.

On how intoxication impacts her work, Bay Bay told VICE, “[When] I am not drunk – the painting is more good. But [when I’m] drunk [it’s] sometimes stronger. I'm not drunk [it’s] smart and I am drunk [it’s] strong,” she laughed.

Her next show at Yangon Photo Festival, addresses alcoholism through self-analytical photo montages and drawings that supposedly act as a rope keeping her afloat amid her private sea of anxiety.

“I know myself. I have talent, and I try for art and concentration,” her artist statement said. “But it is not enough to keep me alive. These are different paths I take waiting until end of my life mostly. I don’t know how to live more tomorrow.”