Three Dancers, by Htein Lin

Three Dancers This piece from the series about dancers features elements inspired by Anyeint, a traditional Burmese heater form that is becoming increasingly rare in Myanmar today. The backdrop includes classic stage props and settings used in performances, recreated through an inventive printmaking process.

Using blocks carved from soap (shwe war - a hard, yellowish soap produced by state factories and distributed to prisoners, still used today), Htein Lin began sculpting small patterns for printing. Some carvings didn’t turn out as planned, but he kept experimenting. One day, a fellow prisoner brought him a potato. He cut it in half, applied paint, and pressed it onto the surface. Suddenly, a face appeared. He also gathered nearby leaves and used them alongside the soap blocks to create textured prints.

In the background, you can spot fragments of Burmese performance backdrops printed using these makeshift tools. In earlier works from this series, he focused on drawing theatrical elements, including dentures used by comic performers. But here, he returns to the dancers themselves, creating a trio of them.