Overview
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Born in 1980, Aung Ko pursued his studies in Fine Art Painting at the University of Culture in Yangon and began his career as a painter. Gradually he also embraced sculpture, installation art and video. Through these various mediums and by using natural, recycled or reused materials such as bamboo, Aung Ko observes and records traditional craft making, beliefs and practices which are doomed to disappear. Central to his concerns are the political upheavals that impact Myanmar, as well as those caused by the climate change. The landscapes of his native village and the traumas generated by the successive civil wars feed his practice. In a country where artistic creation is constrained by a harsh censorship, together with his life partner Nge Lay, Aung Ko founded the Thu Ye Dan Village Art Project at his native village in northern Myanmar. This art project strived to encourage collaboration with artists and villagers to create community-based artworks. In Myanmar and during his many travels around the world, Aung Ko consistently and methodically films his daily environment, creating what he calls a diary of memories. Aung Ko left Myanmar after the February 2021 Military Coup. He has obtained a refugee status and lives and works in Paris, France.
Aung Ko has participated in the Singapore Biennale 2008, 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in 2009, Goethe Institutes’ 2012-2013 traveling exhibition Riverscapes IN FLUX in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta and Manila, an artist residency at the Pavillon du Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2015, the Children Biennale 2019, National Gallery Singapore and The Time is Yours, the art component of the Singapore Festival in Yangon in 2020. His new body of work crated during a Residency at the MAC VAL, Vitry sur Seine, France, is exhibited at MAC VA until 31st December 2022. |