We are proud to announce that we had a successful photo exhibition that ran from March 22nd – April 16th, 2022 at the Atrium City Hall in the Hague, the Netherlands as part of the Movies that Matter Festival. We showed a collection of photos, artworks and our short documentary under the theme “Protesting Through Street Art”. Our exhibition aimed to show how the events unfolded on the ground in Myanmar after the military seized power in the form of a coup d’état and sent the country back into an era of dark dictatorship, how the people are subjected to unspeakable violence and repression, and how they continue to resist in many creative and courageous ways. During the festival we successfully organised a fundraiser to finance equipment for members of our collective. Our representative in Europe gave two guest lectures to the audience of the Movies that Matter Festivals on Tour in Utrecht and Delft to present the work and activities of our collective.
Half of the content creators from the Visual Rebellion team are now hiding in neighbouring countries and the other half is still surviving in Myanmar in very dire conditions. They fear to be cut off from the world as data prices shot up and access to telecommunications is made very difficult by the most recent junta orders. Some have been shot in protests, some had to live in the jungle, some had to flee their village overnight, some lost all their material and all struggle to provide for themselves as safe opportunities for young Burmese journalists have disappeared in their country.
The Visual Rebellion team is determined to cater to their most urgent needs as well as pursuing media teaching and helping them save and structure their work.
More information about this event on the Movies that Matter Website
A special thank you to Jacqueline Meijer, Margje de Koning and Ali Remmelts for making the exhibition possible.
Here are a few highlights of the exhibition:
PANEL 1: Protesters enter Shwe Daung city with a lifesize portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and de facto leader of Myanmar before the coup d’État. She has been moved by the military in an undisclosed location since the start of the coup, after having already spent a combined 15 years under house arrest on numerous occasions since the end of the 1980’s.
PANEL 2: Teachers wearing traditional hats protest in front of the Shwe Daung Township Education Office. Hundreds of thousands of workers walked off their jobs after the military coup d’État as part of the widely followed Civil Disobedience Movement.
PANEL 3: Residents built makeshift barricades at each entrance of Monywa town, Sagaing Region, as an attempt to slow down the advance of state authorities who unleashed a severe repression in the area which left hundreds of people dead.
PANEL 4: On the “Global Myanmar Spring Revolution Day”, Burmese citizens organized gatherings in dozens of cities across the world to raise awareness on the plight and determination of the people in Myanmar. The junta’s forces have intensified search and arrests of any citizen involved in protests and groups of youths have reacted by shifting to a secretive and guerrilla style to avoid brutal crackdown.
If you want to order prints of pictures which were on display at the exhibition or if you want to host this exhibition, please contact us via [email protected] or [email protected]
