Watch: At the table with Sawangwongse Yawnghwe

The At The Table series brings together the voices of the six AM11 artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions.

Sawangwongse Yawnghwe was born into the Yawnghwe royal family. His grandfather, Sao Shwe Thaik, was the first president of the Union of Burma (1948–1962) after independence from Britain. Following a 1962 military coup Yawnghwe’s family was exiled, first to Thailand and then to Canada, where he grew up. Yawnghwe’s paintings specifically engage with politics through this family history and contemporary and historical events in Myanmar to address conflicts related to drugs, revolutionary armies and state violence, aiming to clarify a complex political landscape. Simultaneously, they engage with the histories of painting to draw out nuanced and layered meanings.

Jonathan Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. His research focuses on a range of issues in contemporary philosophy of mind and phenomenology. He is the author of two books with Oxford University Press, one focusing on the nature of emotions, and another on the phenomenology of visual experiences.

Mars da Silva Saude is an artist and researcher making time-based media that engages with marginal histories, autistic poetics, landscape, radical politics, documentation, and text(s). Their work includes 16mm film, photography, illustrated lecture performances, and sound. A Portuguese national raised in California, Saude lives and works in Aberystwyth, Wales. Saude was commissioned by Artes Mundi to create a text-piece responding to Yawnghwe’s work for beside/gerllaw - a series of texts specially produced for Artes Mundi 11 with Testun testun, a new independent platform fostering expanded art/writing practices in Wales.

Zoe Butt is a curator and writer, nurturing critical thinking and historically conscious artistic communities, fostering dialogue among cultures of the globalising souths.

In 2022 she founded ‘in-tangible institute’, seeking a robust ecology for locally-responsive curatorial talent in Southeast Asia and is currently Lead Advisor (Southeast Asia and Oceania), Kadist Art Foundation. Previously she was Artistic Director, Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City (2017-2021), Executive Director, Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City (2009–2016); Director, International Programs, Long March Project, Beijing (2007–2009); Assistant Curator, Contemporary Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2001–2007)