Going back home

2013

Acrylic on canvas

107 x 137 cm

Signed by the artist

The inspiration for KZL’s next series of paintings, “Moving Forward” comes from life in Yangon. Each day many thousands of people travel from their villages for as long as two hours in each direction to catch a ferry across the river to the center of Yangon. They seek daily, seasonal or long term employment and most will travel to Yangon merely to receive one or two dollars a day more than they would if they worked closer to home. Although many hope to find a job with a greater financial reward in the future, most will accept very modest gains in the present to have the possibility to move
forward.

This struggle is shared by many in Mexico City, Calcutta, Cairo and Lagos, to name a few other cities. What is so strikingabout the “Moving Forward” paintings is their universality, yet they also capture something uniquely Burmese and provide a subtle visual commentary that is the work of a master painter.