The human toll and long-term infrastructural damage to an already embattled Myanmar continues to mount following the devastating 7.7 earthquake on 28 March. The country’s art community, both at home and in exile, has been raising funds for the country’s rebuilding efforts and providing channels to support relief, rather than filling the coffers of the ruling Tatmadaw junta.
The curator Kyel Sin Lin is arranging an auction of a work by Myanmar’s foremost contemporary artist and outspoken advocate Htein Lin, depicting the earthquake epicentre Sagaing and the collapsed Ava Bridge. The piece is part of a series on Myanmar townships created on recycled cards, says Vicky Bowman, the former British ambassador to Myanmar and wife of the artist.
Bowman encourages donations to the charities Medical Action Myanmar, Community Partners International and Children of the Mekong. On the ground, she highlights galleries in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, holding earthquake relief fundraising sales including The Collector Art Gallery, Sar Ga Gallery and Nawaday Tharlar Gallery.
Fundraising efforts are also coming from the small but passionate groups throughout the Asian art world who have long supported Myanmar’s artists and their country’s long struggle for democracy. A quickly organised fundraising night on 10 April at the Hong Kong gallery 10 Chancery Lane raised an initial $13,000 for Médecins Sans Frontières and Children of the Mekong; “a drop in the bucket,” says the gallery founder Katie de Tilly.
Around 30 people turned out for the dinner, while the fundraising effort continued online until 30 April, offering for sale a photograph by the renowned Myanmar performance artist Moe Satt. All donations over HKD 5,000 ($640) received a 30-edition print by Htein Lin. Both artists are in 10 Chancery Lane’s Southeast Asia exhibition, Beauty Will Save the World (until 16 May).
Karin Weber Gallery, another veteran Hong Kong gallery that regularly shows Myanmar artists, is organising a special sale of the painting The Bridge (1972) by the Burmese Modernist San Win (1905-81), with all proceeds going to the educational non-profit Prospect Burma. The work depicting a rural bridge comes from the private collection of the British scholar Anna Allott, who was Bowman’s friend and teacher.
“The family suspects it was acquired from or given by the artist on one of Anna’s visits to Myanmar in the 1970s or early 80s,” explains the gallery director, Stephanie Braun. Based at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Allott researched then-Burma and visited regularly from 1953 until her death in 2024 at the age of 93. “It’s a very special piece for the family, and they are looking to sell it with all proceeds going to Prospect Burma, the charity that Anna has supported from its inception,” Braun says.
The March earthquake, which claimed more than 3,600 lives, has further devastated a country already in tatters from a civil war between the Tatmadaw junta, which seized power in a 2021 coup, and a democratic resistance allied with ethnic minority regions. The country is also reeling from the destruction caused by massive flooding after Typhoon Yagi in September last year. The Tatmadaw has announced that new elections will be held in December this year, though critics fear that Myanmar’s infrastructure remains too damaged for a successful nationwide vote even if the voting is free and fair.
The earthquake’s devastation brought a rare request for help from the head of Tatmadaw Min, Aung Hlaing. In mid-April, Malaysia’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who is the chair of the ten-country block Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), met with Min Aung Hlaing to press for an extension of the temporary ceasefire established after the earthquake, though the junta has continued conducting airstrikes.
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