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Melissa Carlson: It is my first time. It was easy to curate because a lot I had covered in my prior research. It became a matter of going back and asking the artists if I could borrow their work. I didn't have a single rejection; they were all really excited to have their work shown.What has your past Myanmar-related research focused on in specific?
I used to be in the Foreign Service working in Bangkok. When I was working in Thailand, I was interested in Myanmar issues. There were so many cross-border issues going on in terms of migrant workers, refugee camps on the border, etc., and I was finally able to visit in 2011. I also have always loved art and was always interested in censorship and domestic politics of whatever country I'm working in.I went back to graduate school to at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, focusing on Southeast Asia and I used that opportunity to look more in depth at Myanmar. The program was heavily econ-focused, but I managed to write this paper on the national identity of Myanmar through the lens of censorship applied to visual arts.I found it fascinating how the government took a different path towards censorship. If you look at how other socialist countries like China or the former Soviet Union used censorship to promote an ideology, there was really an artist core to promote things like maybe "The Mighty Lenin," or industrial China. You didn't have that in socialist Burma.
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Well there's probably more than four, but I noticed that paintings were consistently censored when they hit one of four categories. Abstract works were probably the most censored since they made the government nervous because they weren't sure if an artist was trying to hide a political message. The regime was more comfortable with realist, agrarian, and pastoral scenes-nothing that really reflected Myanmar in the 60s. If you were doing abstract work and anything funky it wouldn't go through.Then the next category was color. Red is weird because it's the global color of socialism, but it was still a threat to the government censors. Before 1988, they just saw red as violence, revolution, and blood. Too much black in a photo was bad, too. Even with photography-there's one photo in our exhibit that was originally censored because it made the censor board feel that the artist was commenting on Myanmar being depressed.The third, probably the most obvious, is political allegory. Not even outright political messages, but subtle political allegorical hints-paintings like Civilization, or Lady First Safety First. Even if they were subtle, the censors got it and were always lurking for threatening art.The fourth category is morality. Paintings that were of nudes or nontraditional portrayals of Buddhism were censored. Even today, those get you in a bit of trouble.
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It wasn't like Nazi Germany where they burned degenerate art. Apparently, closer to 1988, the Myanmar officials were rougher with the art in terms of damaging it. Often, they'd put a stamp on the paintings-on the front and back. It'd still taint the art, and I wanted a piece like that in the exhibit, but apparently several museums have already bought those. I also heard stories of artists negotiating with the censors. Like people who did nudes would paste paper on top of what was considered lewd.

Most are on loan from the artists themselves. Some I had known about from my research, but I can't say I rejected any censored work-I didn't want to double censor. [laughs]When I did the paper, I had to really gain people's trust to get them to tell me their stories. I had already met with some of them three or four times. Then they'd introduce me to friends. The artist community in the city Yangon is really tight.What were the artists' thought of this group show? Were they elated or did they feel like what was the point, since the work still isn't being shown in Myanmar?
I like to think this jump-started them to think about showing their work. Like the artist San Minn was inspired to do his own exhibition in Yangon. The reason I chose Hong Kong was because I live here, though the timing is fascinating.I think it's interesting to bring the art out of Myanmar to have other countries look at what life can be like for an artist outside of their own regime. And it will be good to eventually bring it back to Myanmar so the artists can stand proud next to their work.If you did have this exhibition in Myanmar itself, do you think there could be a negative reply from the current regime?
I don't know. I'd like to think we could have it in Yangon based on the reforms made to the 1964 Censorship Code in 2013, and I'd be curious to see if any of the artists would be interested. I think more would be after 2015 when there's a new election. I couldn't say the current government wouldn't respond-and lately there's been intense sentencing of journalists who are covering issues it doesn't want covered. I would hope the regime has more on its plate than monitoring the art scene.Banned in Burma is open at the Nock Art Foundation through November 9 and will re-open on November 29 at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre. For more information, visit the exhibition's Facebook page.Follow Zach Sokol on Twitter.
