Moe Satt

Biography

b. 1983, Yangon, Myanmar

Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Moe Satt is a visual and performance artist who uses his body to explore identity, embodiment, and political resistance. Part of a renowned generation of Burmese artists who overcame government censorship and oppression, Satt engages with history through a conceptual artistic perspective. The artist draws from recent events in Burmese political history, primarily investigating the period of 1983 to 2015, spanning from the year of his birth to when he began his practice in performance art. The artist’s own body emerges as a consistent feature throughout his oeuvre, becoming a layered medium of symbolic meaning. Satt conceptualises one’s anatomy as the most faithful representation of self knowledge, and his hand gestures particularly stand out as an exemplification of nonverbal bodily communication. For Satt, the body is the only entity one can wholly possess. Yet, bodies can interact and be interpreted, and each body is defined by one’s own exclusive ownership over it. In recent years, Satt has increasingly explored this junction, collaborating with other performers under his instruction and involving the audience during live performances. Satt renders the body as an entity that is uniquely independent yet shared, poignantly reflecting on histories that are simultaneously personal yet collective.