Ian Holliday

Painting Myanmar's Transition Ian Holliday

Eighty paintings and reflections inspired by Myanmar's political transition offer rare insights into a society struggling to reform. In Painting Myanmar's Transition, Ian Holliday and Aung Kaung Myat showcase work produced by eighty artists during a time of change. At the start of the 2010s, Myanmar embarked on a transition away from half a century of rigid military rule. A decade later, the country remains caught in a struggle for power.

To help bridge the divide between insider and outsider perspectives on the politics of Myanmar, this book reproduces paintings and interviews by local artists. Placed alongside each other, the eighty paintings and reflections offer rare insights into a society that for a decade had experienced a democratic interlude. Together, they conjure a set of nuanced understandings of an important Southeast Asian state navigating complex political change.