COLLECTIONS
Amamata, the First Mom, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 200 × 200 cm
The image courtesy of the artist.
Busui Ajaw is a Chiang-Rai-based artist who creates artworks closely intertwined with bits from her everyday life, as well as with her own identity as a member of the ethnic group of the Ahka.Ajaw’s unique upbringing and family background has significantly informed her artistic practice which, through sculpture and painting, has been exploring today’s society, while giving voice to the Ahka’s culture, their traditions, customs and history.
Amamata the First Mom is a depiction of “Amamata”, the all-mother being from the Ahka’s mythology, who is believed to have given birth to both the human and the spiritual world. She is a titan who was bestowed by the gods to guide the Akha people, both in life and in death, providing an example of how highly women and mothers were regarded in the traditional Ahka’s culture. Yet, women rank low within the Akha’s hierarchical order which is based on a patrilineal system, trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty. It is against this backdrop that Busui shows the importance of women in today’s society confronting the primordial worldview with her representation of “Amamata”.
Busui Ajaw (Born 1986 in Thailand. Lives and works in Chiang Rai, Thailand.)
Busui Ajaw is a self-taught painter who creates works that draw from her everyday experiences as a woman in the contemporary world as well as her roots as an Akha ethnic minority. Since she began drawing at age 15, she has developed an expressive painterly language to communicate both the seen and unseen as well as the material and the psychological.
Born in a remote mountainous region of Myanmar, the artist was forced to flee as a young child with her family after a military invasion of their land. Her practice relates to her unique upbringing. The artist is an Akha, a nomadic ethnic group from the highlands of mainland Southeast Asia, and is from a family of artisans. Coming from an oral culture, the practice of image-making was initially foreign to her. She recently began to incorporate wooden sculpture into her visual language as well as working with installations.
