Fires by Saw Naing Lin

AGENDA:

August 2nd | 4 - 6pm

Join us to celebrate the exhibition and gather with the community for a good time. Light snacks will be served.

• Limited FREE Stickers of the artist's painting will be given out

• There will be an exhibition tour lead by the artist's family

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Aug. 3rd - Sept. 7th 2025

"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."

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Saw Naing Lin was born in 1977 in a mixed Buddhist/Christian household inKarenni State, an ethnic-minority region in Burma/Myanmar. In Burma the central government has been at war with the ethnic periphery since 1962. In the early 2000s he and his family fled to a UN refugee camp in Thailand.

When he heard that other family members were ready to flee, he walked backaround army units and over landmined paths to his home village and carried achild relative for three weeks on his shoulders back to Thailand.

In 2010 he was resettled to the United States, and in 2011 moved to CedarRapids, where he now lives with his family. Since 2016 he has been a citizen of the United States, the first country to grant him citizenship

Also check out other Arts events in Saint Paul, Exhibitions in Saint Paul, Fine Arts events in Saint Paul.