Naga Maedaw serpent

Soe Yu Nwe, Myanmar b.1989 / Naga Maedaw serpent 2018 / Glazed porcelain, china paint, gold and mother of pearl lustre / Five parts: 133 x 48 x 37cm / Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Soe Yu Nwe

Soe Yu Nwe, Myanmar b.1989 / Naga Maedaw serpent 2018 / Glazed porcelain, china paint, gold and mother of pearl lustre / Five parts: 133 x 48 x 37cm / Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Soe Yu Nwe / View full image

Ceramicist Soe Yu Nwe draws on the folklore and vernacular arts of Myanmar, as well as Buddhist and animistic practices. Working with clay allows her to express her feelings of disconnection when away from home, and to explore elements of her culture and heritage.

‘Naga Maedaw serpent’ 2018

Soe Yu Nwe, Myanmar b.1989 / Naga Maedaw serpent 2018 / Glazed porcelain, china paint, gold and mother of pearl lustre / Five parts: 133 x 48 x 37cm / Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Soe Yu Nwe

Soe Yu Nwe, Myanmar b.1989 / Naga Maedaw serpent 2018 / Glazed porcelain, china paint, gold and mother of pearl lustre / Five parts: 133 x 48 x 37cm / Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Soe Yu Nwe / View full image

In her works, the female body is often fragmented and transformed into visceral, semi-botanical sculptures, resembling vessels formed from tangled thorn bushes, overgrown with weeds and flowers. The serpent is significant personally and symbolically, representing transformation and sexuality. In Myanmar, the goddess of serpent dragons is Naga Mae-Daw, often venerated in the country’s numerous pagoda temples. Said to be of pre-Buddhist origin, she rules over magical spirits known as Nagas, transformative snake-like beings that live in rivers, lakes, oceans and in the bottom of wells.

Painted wooden idols representing gods, goddesses and mythical beings; pagoda temples; marionettes; the heart-shaped leaves of the Bodhi tree; and ‘spirit houses’ – shrines built to placate the spirits of trees, forests and mountains that have been disrupted by human habitation – all inspire her practice.

Video: Soe Yu Nwe discusses her practice & female identity

Soe Yu Nwe, Myanmar b.1989 / Naga Maedaw serpent 2018 / Glazed porcelain, china paint, gold and mother of pearl lustre / Five parts: 133 x 48 x 37cm / Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Soe Yu Nwe

Related Stories

  •
    Read •

    Idas Losin’s paintings are notable for their fine brushwork

    Idas Losin’s paintings are characterised by their fine brushwork and stark composition, typically foregrounding their subject matter on a flat, open pictorial plane. A Taiwanese artist of Truku and Atayal heritage, her works range from expressions of aboriginal identity — incorporating tattoos, woven patterns and other cultural objects — to dreamlike renderings of island settings and seascapes. Losin’s tatara fishing canoes are of the Tao people and from their home of Lanyu (Orchid Island), off the south-east coast of Taiwan. Waiting to sail 2016 With limited opportunities for aboriginal contemporary artists in Taiwan until the late 2000s, Losin came to painting relatively late. Prior to her work as an artist, she spent several years working on documentary films of Taiwanese tribes, focusing on the stories of elders. When she saw ‘The Native Born: Objects and Representations from Ramingining, Arnhem Land’ at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003, Losin was inspired to travel to Australia. With further exposure to Australian Indigenous art, she had the opportunity to reflect on the status of Taiwan’s aboriginal people, and became determined to explore her own heritage and tell the stories of her community through painting. Following a joint residency with leading Māori artists George Nuku and Tracey Tawhiao, Losin also took an interest in the notion of Austronesian migration and the potential for dialogue with cultures from South-East Asia, Oceania and Madagascar, which linguistic and anthropological evidence links to Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes. Curiosity has since driven her to travel further to study the artistic expression of indigenous and First Nation perspectives in North America and around the Pacific, including Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Hawai’i, Guam and Aotearoa New Zealand, in what she describes as her Island Hopping Art Project. Losin draws creative energy from the diversity of indigenous Asian and Pacific cultures, their harmonious mixing of old and new, and the ways in which they negotiate the influence of Westernisation, while maintaining local culture. Floating 2017 Tatara 2018 Losin’s ‘Orchid Island’ paintings reflect the significance of fishing in Tao life, centring on the form of the tatara at rest, preparing to launch, and afloat in calm waters. These symmetrical vessels, with their distinctively upturned bow and stern, are typically decorated with carved and painted geometric emblems representing the sea, ancestral beings and the flying fish that play a major role in ceremonial cycles. With eyes at both ends, the boats are regarded as extensions of the human body, linking heaven and earth. Other paintings show topographic renderings of Jimagaod (Lesser Orchid Island), an uninhabited volcanic islet to the island’s south. In addition to their subject matter, Losin’s works are notable for their painterly range, the artist varying her approach between photorealism and flatter, stylised representations. At times, she playfully exploits the texture of her brushstrokes, as in the alternating golden waves that form the ground of the tatara in Floating 2017. Idas Losin describes her engagement with Austronesia as a learning process, one that offers new perspectives on creativity and identity. For Losin, participation in this broader cultural community forges a deeper personal connection with her home of Taiwan. Reuben Keehan is Curator, Contemporary Asian Art. QAGOMA Artists & Artworks: Explore Idas Losin the QAGOMA Collection Featured image detail: Idas Losin Waiting to sail 2016
  •
    Read •

    Peking Opera robe made in transparent plastic

    Chinese artist Wang Jin’s Robe 1999 renders the iconic form of the Peking Opera robe in transparent plastic embroidered with fishing line (illustrated). The juxtaposition of a traditional high-cultural form and modern synthetic material refers to transformations in Chinese society, most pointedly the rapid evolution of consumerism. Robe is on display within the exhibition ‘I Can Spin Skies’ at the Queensland Art Gallery’s Henry and Amanda Bartlett Galleries (5 & 6). Wang Jin ‘Robe’ 1999 Plastic, for Wang, is the material that most succinctly represents the contradictions of contemporary society — it is at once cheap and versatile, widespread and environmentally unfriendly. While producing such a revered article of traditional culture from such a crude fabric might be seen as disrespectful, the object itself retains a haunting beauty, one that could only be produced by the use of such a luminous surface to construct what remains a form of undeniable elegance. This suggests that the relationship between tradition and modernity is more complex than a process of displacement, with an older tradition making way for a new one. In this sense, the forces at work in a rapidly transforming Chinese society deserve careful and ongoing attention.