Where musings on resistance and experiments on embodiment fuse into dance.
Rest the Thumbs on the Cheekbones, the first European solo exhibition by artist Moe Satt from Myanmar, brings a new commission alongside recent and early works in conversation to showcase the artist’s relentless, dynamic exploration of embodiment, identity, and political resistance. The exhibition builds on Satt’s two-year residency at Rijksakademie from 2022-2024 as well as his 2020 residency at Delfina Foundation, and extends into a collaboration with Tate on a new iteration of his performance f n’ f (face and fingers) (2008) in The Tanks.
At the forefront of a generation of artists from Myanmar that emerged in the 2000s, Moe Satt is most known for his conceptual, performance, and video works that experiment with his own body as a field of symbolism and sense making. The exhibition title is excerpted from his artist book f n’ f (face and fingers) (2024), which details how to transition through his choreography of 108 combinations of face and fingers. It also highlights Satt’s recent interest in expanding the notion of embodiment beyond his own body through instructions, participatory installations, and group performances.
Many of Moe Satt’s works draw from the social-political turbulences of Myanmar and wrestle with oppression and censorship. Satt says, “my country has gone back and forth with military rule since 1962, which is why we cannot avoid political issues in our work”. Storyline (voted/gun/revolution/thumbs down) (2024), for instance, outlines four significant political chapters in the recent history of Myanmar through four hand gestures, all symbols of collective sentiment and actions. Body Inside T-Shirt (2024) draws inspiration from a 2005 performance by the artist and comments on the current political situation in Myanmar — three distorted T-shirt plaster sculptures act as metaphors of the fact that many outside the country know something is happening inside, but are uncertain about the actual developments on the ground.