Busui Ajaw 布苏伊·阿贾 Myanmar, b. 1986

Born in a remote mountainous region of Myanmar, the artist was forced to flee as a young child with her family after a military invasion of their land. Her Untitled self-portraits express her experiences and identity as an Ahka hilltribe woman, and as an individual who embraces dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, and life and death.Since she began drawing at age 15, she has developed an expressive painterly language to communicate both the seen and unseen as well as the material and the psychological. Ajaw’s work has been shown at the Singapore Biennial, MAIIAM Museum, Chiangmai; Elevations, Laos; Artist Run, Bangkok, nichido contemporary, Tokyo and will be featured in the upcoming Bangkok Biennial.