Myanmar Glitched is a body of work responding to the underlying errors in the beautiful Burmese culture.
Through my time living in Yangon, Myanmar, I discovered the allure of the Burmese culture. With the glittering gold
pagodas, massive Buddhas, hypnotizing music, and kind people, Myanmar is an exotic land that was once lost in time.
Behind the beetle-nut stained smiles, however, lies unimaginable pain from the unspoken time of oppression in the
five decades when the country was closed off to the world. Even through the re-opening of the Golden Land,
corruption runs deep within the society and the government, preventing the people and culture from flourishing.
Starting with small glitches in my day-to-day life, like crumbling sidewalks, power outages, and miscommunications, the
cultural nuances were just the surface of the deep defects I would witness. Rigged elections bought by government
typhoons, Buddhist extremist monks calling for the murder and displacement of others, human trafficking and child labor,
and the height of the world opium trade; the flaws began revealing themselves as the glittering shell of the illusion cracked.
Using my own photographs from my travels around Myanmar, I have translated the data into written and audio forms
before altering it to purposefully create glitches, or errors, in the image. This process leaves the artist blind until the end
result is revealed. Taking away control allowed me to recreate the helplessness felt as the cultural errors where revealed
to me. I left the photos in their purest glitch form with minimal editing and no re-adjusting or re-creating to highlight the
limitation that Burmese citizens have in changing these societal damages. This created a visual response to these hidden
issues as I physically corrupted the beauty I have seen to reflect the concealed malfeasance that is rooted in the country of Myanmar.
Through my time living in Yangon, Myanmar, I discovered the allure of the Burmese culture. With the glittering gold
pagodas, massive Buddhas, hypnotizing music, and kind people, Myanmar is an exotic land that was once lost in time.
Behind the beetle-nut stained smiles, however, lies unimaginable pain from the unspoken time of oppression in the
five decades when the country was closed off to the world. Even through the re-opening of the Golden Land,
corruption runs deep within the society and the government, preventing the people and culture from flourishing.
Starting with small glitches in my day-to-day life, like crumbling sidewalks, power outages, and miscommunications, the
cultural nuances were just the surface of the deep defects I would witness. Rigged elections bought by government
typhoons, Buddhist extremist monks calling for the murder and displacement of others, human trafficking and child labor,
and the height of the world opium trade; the flaws began revealing themselves as the glittering shell of the illusion cracked.
Using my own photographs from my travels around Myanmar, I have translated the data into written and audio forms
before altering it to purposefully create glitches, or errors, in the image. This process leaves the artist blind until the end
result is revealed. Taking away control allowed me to recreate the helplessness felt as the cultural errors where revealed
to me. I left the photos in their purest glitch form with minimal editing and no re-adjusting or re-creating to highlight the
limitation that Burmese citizens have in changing these societal damages. This created a visual response to these hidden
issues as I physically corrupted the beauty I have seen to reflect the concealed malfeasance that is rooted in the country of Myanmar.