About the Exhibition

Aug 3 - Sept 7

I speak with my hands.

I come from a gorgeous country of mountains and waterfalls, villages and hillside farms. Yet it is unlivable. For 60 years, the government of Burma (Myanmar) has conducted a quiet genocide against ethnic minorities like me and my family. The government army enslaves our children, rapes our girls and women, burns our villages, destroys our crops and food. My family and I first found refuge in the 2000s in a camp in Thailand. There I became an art teacher for children.

In the 2010s we were resettled to Cedar Rapids. It has never been easy for me to speak English, so I let my paintings speak for me. Through them I share the peaceful moments of my childhood and the horrors of conflict that began in my teenage years, the intentional clearing of hillsides by fire to make a good harvest and the fires set by our own country’s soldiers from which we ran for our lives.