Sawangwongse Yawnghwe

b. 1971,  Shan State, Burma

Lives and works in Zutphen, Netherlands 

Sawangwongse Yawnghwe was born in a rebel controlled corner of Shan State in 1971. His grandfather, Sao Shwe Thaik, the former ruler of the princely state of Yawnghwe, was independent Burma’s first president. After the death of his grandfather following a military coup Yawnghwe’s father and grandmother co-founded a resistance movement opposed to Ne Win. The artist spent his youth in Thailand, before his family fled to Canada after a failed assassination attempt on his father. Yawnghwenow lives and works between Thailand and the Netherlands. His works critique dominant Burmacentric artistic and historical narratives by presenting a personal, fictive counter-historiography, through a fictional museum, and the feature of suppression—what remains under the surface or hidden. His acute use of investigative methodology is tempered by the way in which he uses it to approach philosophical problems about what history means when the narratives of minorities have been dismantled and erased. Recent exhibitions include the Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai (2023), My Oma, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2023), The Broken White Umbrella, Nova Contemporary, Bangkok (2022), and Cappuccino in Exile, Jane Lombard Gallery, New York. His works belong to the collections of Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, MAIIAM Contemporary Art, Chiang Mai,  and KADIST, San Francisco.