Sawangwongse Yawnghwe (born 1971) is a Burmese contemporary artist. His artistic practice spans paintings, installations, and cartographic works that address such as state violence, erased minority histories, and the geopolitical complexities of Myanmar.

Born into the Yawnghwe royal family of Shan State, he is the grandson of Sao Shwe Thaik, the first president of the Union of Burma following its independence from Britain. Following Shwe Thaik's death in prison after the 1962 military coup, Yawnghwe's family fled to Thailand after an assassination attempt on his father and later obtained political asylum in Canada. He earned a Bachelor's degree from Emily Carr University in Vancouver in 1993 and a Master's degree from Concordia University in Montreal in 1995. He currently lives and works in the Netherlands. Biography Yawnghwe was born in a rebel-controlled area of Shan State of Burma in 1971. He comes from the Yawnghwe royal family of Shan. His grandfather, Sao Shwe Thaik, was the first president of the Union of Burma (1948–1962) after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Shwe Thaik later died in prison following the 1962 military coup by General Ne Win. Since then, his family was driven into exile, his father and grandmother subsequently co-founding a resistance movement opposing Ne Win. He spent his youth in Thailand, however, following a failed assassination attempt on his father, his family fled to Canada, where he grew up and received his artistic training.

Yawnghwe started drawing since he was in elementary school. When he was 13 years old, living in Vancouver, BC, Yawnghwe and his mother worked at McDonald’s while his father worked on his PhD in political science at the University of British Columbia. At 18 years old, Yawnghwe joined the Royal Canadian Naval reserve for a year. Afterwards, he received a scholarship to study at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Then he studied philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal hoping his education would be influential to his art practice. That year, he applied to exhibit at grunt gallery and was featured in an exhibition there the following year. In 2004, his father passed away. During this time, he began reconnecting with his Burmese heritage. He came across his father’s photographs and produced small paintings of him as a way of working through the grief of losing his father. When Yawnghwe was 25, he met artist Heinrich Nicolaus, who was in Vancouver giving a painting workshop, who then invited him to work in his studio in the village of Montefioralle in Tuscany, Italy. He spent six months living in Nicolaus's loft and working in a studio located in a former factory. Years later, Yawnghwe collaborated with Nicolaus again in Italy. Yawnghwe joined an artist commune in nearby Panzano and created the Museum of Modern Art Panzano (MoMAP). At MoMAP, Yawnghwe met Max Seidel, the Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and gifted him a copy of his artist's book, The Disasters of Military Rule in Burma, which he produced between 2004–2007. The book was published under his Shan name, Huung Hpa, due to safety concerns surrounding the use of his real name in 2007. During the time of the Saffron Revolution in Burma, Yawnghwe traveled to India and Thailand for his book. Before his father passed away, Yawnghwe had avoided the region. He stayed in Rishikesh, India, where he produced one or two drawings a day, which resulted in the creation of 81 drawings. His drawings depicted atrocities committed under Burma's military dictatorship and drew on Francisco Goya's The Disasters of War. Recalling the trauma he experienced surrounding his family's exile, including killings in Chiang Mai and the assassination of one of his father's comrades when he was 11 or 12, Yawnghwe views art as a way of processing and reflecting on those events.

Kerstin Winking, a curator and scholar based in Amsterdam, along with Dev Benegal, co-directed Painting Exile (2022), a film about Yawnghwe .

Exhibitions Throughout his artistic career, Yawnghwe has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (2026), Artes Mundi in Wales (2026), Berlin Biennale (2025), RHIZOMA Biennale (2025), Thailand Biennale Chiang Rai (2023), ART SG (2024), Singapore Biennale (2022), Art Basel Hong Kong (2022), Kathmandu Triennale (2022), Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh (2020 and 2018), 1st Bangkok Biennale (2018), the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Australia (2018), the 12th Gwangju Biennale Exhibition in South Korea (2018), Qualandiya International in Jerusalem (2016), Steirischer Herbst in Austria (2016) and Dak’Art in Senegal (2016).

His works have been shown at HKW in Berlin, Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands, Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou, National Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Goethe-Institut in Myanmar, Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, and Stedelijk Museum Buereau Amsterdam. Many of his works are housed in the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum and Singapore Art Museum collections.

Yawnghwe is represented by TKG+ in Taipei, Nova Contemporary in Bangkok, and Jane Lombard Gallery in New York.

2026 Venice Biennale Exhibiting in the Central Pavilion of the 61st Venice Biennale, Yawnghwe presented a body of paintings and sculptures examining genocidal economies and the conditions that bring them into being. The selection includes People’s Desire (2018), a six-metre-long installation of 2,500 crudely modelled clay figurines, among them depictions of families that are walking or floating in boats in a mass exodus. Beginning in 2014, Yawnghwe described the persecution of the Rohingya as genocidal and connected it to the broader history of land and resource expropriation affecting Karen, Kachin, and Shan peoples under military rule.

In his painting works, Which Way to Land? An Open Question about Burma’s Fate (2023) and The Bed of Gold Stream (2024), Yawnghwe reworks colonial maps and historical photographs of the Shan minority as a way of reclaiming land, history, resources and intellectual ownership. In The Prince’s Manual, or: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Burma Post Coup Revolution (2024), Yawnghwe confronts the political and social realities of Myanmar in the aftermath of the 2021 coup, which involved aerial bombardment, scorched-earth tactics, ethnic armies, and revolutionary struggle. The two Parallax canvases juxtapose Burma with Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank. The Idiot’s Parallax (2025) frames decolonization as “a violent event that turns the outward force inward, risking self-violence.”

Awards He was a finalist for the 13th Benesse Prize in 2022 and the Artes Mundi 11 Prize in 2026.

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