PROJECT
Sarong Flag
TYPE
Poster, Title Design, Film, Weave
Role
Designer, Director, Editor, Sound
YEAR
2025
Sarong Flag is a project examining feminine imagery within the context of Myanmar's Spring Revolution. It encompasses posters (paper woven and risograph), weaves, and a short film capturing the act of doing laundry, an everyday task that becomes a quiet site of resistance. Rooted in the belief that the personal is political, the work reflects on the intimate rituals and domestic boundaries that shape gendered power.
The project draws from the htamein protests in 2021, when Burmese women strung their sarongs across streets to disrupt and challenge military authority. In Theravada Buddhist belief, hpoun—a form of spiritual masculinity—can be diminished by contact with women's undergarments. Protesters co-opted this idea, weaponizing patriarchal taboos against the state.
In the film, I subvert this narrative by deliberately washing men's boxers alongside a woven textile I created—an emblem of women's labour and craft. This act challenges the invisible lines drawn between purity and pollution, the sacred and the profane.
By framing this domestic gesture within the landscape of protest, Sarong Flag invites viewers to consider how resistance takes shape not only in the streets, but in private, quiet acts of care and defiance.