Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung: Artist-Researchers Documenting Cultural Memory
- hub asean
- Oct 10
- 4 min read
In the evolving landscape of Southeast Asian contemporary art, few artistic partnerships embody the dual role of producer and researcher as comprehensively as Myanmar-based artists Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung. Their collaborative practice represents a critical voice in contemporary art from Myanmar, one that transcends the simplistic political narratives often imposed on the region's artistic output by international observers.
Foundations of a Research-Based Practice
Research is central to our art practice to a significant extent. Process and repeated reflections are also primary components, the artists explain in a 2015 interview with The Brooklyn Rail. This methodological approach distinguishes their work within Myanmar's contemporary art scene, where few artists have transcended their modernist predecessors' preoccupation with the ideal of personal expression.
Born in the mid-1970s and educated at the University of Culture in Yangon, Wah Nu graduated with a BA in music while Tun Win Aung completed a BA in sculpture, both in 1998. Their academic backgrounds—music and sculpture—inform their multimedia approach, which encompasses painting, video, installation, photography, and performance. However, it is their commitment to systematic documentation and analysis that sets them apart as artist-researchers.
The Archival Imperative: "Thousand Pieces of White"
Central to understanding their practice as researchers is their ongoing project "Thousand Pieces of White," initiated in 2009. In 2009, Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung initiated the project 1000 Pieces (of White), gathering and producing objects and images to assemble a portrait of their shared life as partners and collaborators. Interweaving public and private, personal anecdote and pop cultural appropriation, this unique archive attests to the poetry of the everyday.
This ambitious archival project exemplifies their approach as cultural researchers. Rather than simply creating individual artworks, they systematically collect, analyze, and transform materials from Myanmar's recent history. Drawing from old Burmese magazines that were censored under the country's authoritarian rule, Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu transform these once-restricted materials into minimalist abstractions. Pages featuring silver and black redactions have been repurposed into large-scale bichromatic paintings, where layers of censorship are given new life as striking visual compositions.
Methodology as Cultural Documentation
Their research methodology reflects traditional Myanmar collaborative practices. Between us we talk about it and sometimes arrive at an agreement to take it further by collecting together more data, information, and materials related to that specific subject. What we collect could include words, maps, drawings, images, and pieces of sounds or movements. During the process of accumulating these, we look at them closely and make analyses too.
This systematic approach to material culture serves multiple functions: it preserves ephemeral aspects of Myanmar's recent history, particularly during periods of censorship and political restriction; it creates a methodology for understanding how personal and political narratives intersect; and it establishes a framework for future artists and researchers to build upon.
The significance of their research-based practice has been recognized internationally through exhibitions at major institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States (2013); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2011); and biennials including Singapore Biennale (2016); 4th Guangzhou Triennial, China (2011); and the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2009).
This international presence is particularly significant within ASEAN and APEC cultural contexts, as their work provides substantive cultural content that moves beyond superficial representations of Myanmar. Their practice offers international audiences sophisticated insights into Myanmar's cultural complexity while maintaining intellectual rigor and artistic integrity.
Within Myanmar's art scene, Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung represent those taking on artistic practice as an open invitation to actively experience, investigate, critique and transmute actuality – in the here and now – through a range of methods, media and spaces. Their approach challenges both local and international assumptions about what contemporary art from Myanmar should address or how it should appear. Significantly, they have risen to be among the most sought-after Burmese artists on the international circuit without giving in to easy aesthetic tourism whose agents are unknowing curators. This resistance to exoticization while maintaining international relevance demonstrates the sophistication of their research-based approach.
The "Name Series" and Cultural Identity
While specific documentation of "The Name series" remains to be fully catalogued in international art databases, the series appears to be part of their broader investigation into naming, identity, and cultural memory within Myanmar's complex political landscape. Given their systematic approach to documentation and their focus on how personal and political narratives intersect, this series likely examines how names—whether personal, place-based, or institutional—carry cultural and political weight in Myanmar's evolving society.
For government and inter-governmental cultural initiatives within ASEAN and APEC frameworks, Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung's practice offers several important considerations:
Cultural Documentation: Their methodical approach to preserving and recontextualizing cultural materials provides a model for systematic cultural documentation that could inform heritage preservation policies.
Research Infrastructure: Their work demonstrates the need for supporting artist-researchers who can contribute to cultural knowledge production, not merely cultural representation.
Regional Dialogue: Their international exhibition history shows how research-based contemporary art can facilitate meaningful cultural exchange that moves beyond tourism or political oversimplification.
Sustainable Practice: As Tun Win Aung repeatedly enjoins, 'Know yourself'—their emphasis on self-knowledge and autonomous practice provides a framework for sustainable cultural development that doesn't rely solely on external validation or resources.
Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung's significance extends far beyond their individual artistic achievements. Through "The Name" series, they have pioneered what may be Myanmar's first major research-based artwork, establishing methodologies that challenge both colonial historical narratives and contemporary approaches to cultural production. Their work demonstrates how artists can function as cultural researchers while maintaining critical independence from both academic constraints and political ideologies.
"The Name" represents an innovative combination of research and aesthetics that opens original paths toward emancipatory knowledge production and dissemination. By presenting 33 portraits of resistance figures alongside 700 names of independence fighters, they create a non-didactic monument that invites personal interpretation while challenging official historical narratives. Their systematic approach—borrowing research tools from historians while maintaining artistic interpretative freedom—offers a model for how contemporary art can address historical injustices and cultural amnesia.
