Are western policies failing Burma? And is our veneration of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi partly to blame? These questions struck me at an exhibition in Bangkok by the Toronto-based photographer Anne Bayin. Amnesty International Canada called the show “a striking illustration of [Suu Kyi’s] plight.” But it gave me the creeps.
For some photos, Bayin asked famous people such as Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel to express solidarity by holding a half-mask of Suu Kyi over their faces. Other photos show someone wearing a full-face mask of Suu Kyi at apparently random locations: at a pro-Tibet rally in Toronto, for example, or swimming in the Mediterranean. Bayin says her goal was to “depict freedoms often taken for granted.” Yet the masks suggest that our heroes are half-blinded by Suu Kyi’s image, while our own identities are subsumed into hers.
