Htein Lin in front of one of his giant canvases at River Gallery.

HTEIN Lin is convinced that the six-and-a-half years he spent in a cramped room was not wasted time.

When deprived of all else, he recalls how he learnt to use soap and his bare hands to paint. Looking back at that time, his smile is a smile of triumph.
“My life has been very long and different from that of many other artists,” he says with trademark simplicity.

Htein Lin channelled the techniques and the slow-burning anguish he picked up during his years of isolation, to become one of Myanmar’s most original and thought-provoking artists.

Before leaving the country for an indefinite period, Htein Lin put on a final exhibition earlier this month at the Strand Hotel’s River Gallery. He also spoke at length with The Myanmar Times about the deeply held principles, and the years of punishment, that lie behind his work.

Now 40 years old, Htein Lin first became interested in art at university, taking part in his first group exhibition in 1986.

Then came a forced six-year-long absence from university life, which he spent in India. There he met the well-known artist Sit Nyein. The chance meeting allowed him to challenge and develop further his ideas on postmodernism and modern art.

After returning to his hometown of Yangon, Htein Lin finally obtained a degree in law from Yangon University in 1994. That same year he decided to pursue his art full time.

In 1996 he held his first solo exhibition at Yangon’s Lokanat Gallery. At the same time he was pioneering performance art in Myanmar, performing on the streets.

But then in 1998 he was sent to the room where he would spend the next six and a half years. With only a tiny window to look out, he says he sometimes could not tell if it was day or night — but he was still thinking about how he could draw.

He persuaded his companions to give up their white longyis for him to paint on — but what to paint with was the question. He was not allowed brushes or dyes.

Finally he struck up a deal allowing him to have pigment powder brought to him in exchange for giving his benefactor the first look at his work.

“I didn’t have any brushes or pencils, so I started doing this,” he says, demonstrating how he would apply pigment to the back of a photograph or whatever he could find, then use his fingers to draw a pattern in the pigment and press it onto his longyi canvas.

He would also carve shapes into bars of soap to use as a block print. When he got his hands on a syringe he started using that too to squirt paint onto the canvases.

“Using a syringe, you look at the canvas and assess what you want to do, and then you have to work very fast,” he says.

He also started meditating during this period, sometimes up to 12 hours a day.
“This was a very good treatment for me,” he says. “I believe it has been very good for my painting and has given me more concentration.”

When he arrived back in Yangon he was “homeless and jobless”. So he started collecting paper scraps on the streets of Yangon and using them to paint on.

His first exhibition upon his return to freedom in 2004 was entitled “Recycled”, because all the pieces were executed on recycled paper.

His style of using found objects was still evident in the exhibition this month at the River Gallery, where his work sold well and fetched prices of up to US$1950, says gallery owner Gill Pattison. Some of his works are still on display there.

“Ever since I first saw his paintings I have been very impressed by his work,” Pattison says. “I think he is one of Myanmar’s most innovative artists in his use of media and unconventional painting techniques. What especially moves me is how versatile he is in expressing his artistic vision.”

One of his most innovative techniques is painting by running over the canvas with a bike, spreading paint that’s been smeared on the tyres.

But one of the most expressive and challenging styles he has adopted is what he calls “the action painting style” — a combination of performance and visual art in which he covers himself in paint and contorts himself on the canvas while a friend videotapes the action.

He says the technique came out of the dark times in his past.

“We were always looking up at the sky wondering when something was going to hit us, running for our lives and not knowing where our next meal was coming from or when,” he says.

About to begin a new life abroad, Htein Lin’s years of turmoil may have come to an end. But Pattison believes his impact on the international art world is just beginning.

“We will be watching his output as he comes up with a whole new series of stimuli to inspire his work,” she says.