Frontier: Celebrating Art in the City

Frontier: Celebrating Art in the City

In its second year, a wide-ranging art and heritage festival in Yangon broke down barriers between artists and city residents, while organisers hope it encourages Yangonites to question what kind of an urban environment they want to live in.

PATHEIN PARASOLS were suspended as if floating above the pedestrian overpass on Sule Pagoda Road, while “visual poetry” on Pansodan Road lined the last stretch of the commute from Dala, and a “Sound Suit” invited park-goers to step inside a megaphone-punctured canvas enclosure and take control of the airspace.

These public art installations were among nearly a dozen featured in the second annual My Yangon My Home art and heritage festival, hosted across the city from February 25 to March 12. The festival sought to inspire Yangon residents to reassess where art belongs in their changing city, and highlighted some of the compromises made to urban life in the pursuit of development, such as increasing traffic congestion and noise pollution.