About the Artist
I am Khin May Moe (born 1996), also known as May Moee, a full-time visual artist based in Yangon, Myanmar.
I mainly work with watercolor and ink, creating paintings and urban sketches. I enjoy painting historic buildings, cityscapes, and scenes from everyday life. I am a member of Urban Sketchers Yangon and often draw outdoors. For my urban sketches, I usually use brush pen ink and twig ink, and in my recent work I have been exploring detailed experimental watercolor techniques.
I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in German from Mandalay University of Foreign Languages (MUFL) and worked as a German-speaking tour guide from 2018 to 2020. Although I have loved drawing since childhood, I began studying academic painting in 2019 and later graduated with a Diploma in Painting from the National University of Arts and Culture, Yangon (NUAC). Since then, I have been actively creating artworks and participating in group exhibitions in Myanmar.
In 2024, I received an artistic residency scholarship through the EMPM programme and spent six months as a resident artist at Beaux-Arts Nantes Saint-Nazaire in Saint-Nazaire, France, where I presented my work in a student exhibition. After returning to Myanmar, I also participated in the group exhibition J’ai vu le soleil dans l’ombre, organised by the European Union in Myanmar.
I am currently an artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. The work I have developed during this residency will become the foundation of my first solo exhibition in Yangon.
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About the Residency
Pareidolia ( A World Within)
I spent two months as an artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan (May and July). During my residency, I had a lot of time to think, explore, and focus on my art practice every day. Being in a place where I could work freely gave me the opportunity to try a new art practice and experiment with ideas that were different from what I usually draw. As the residency progressed, I created a completely different body of work from the proposal I had written before coming to the residency.
It was also a time to dive into my own mind. I started to enjoy gazing at plants and trees every day, something that is difficult to do regularly in my daily life in Yangon. I enjoyed exploring the garden and drawing from my surroundings. During this process, I broke the boundaries of my own thinking and started making imaginative work that I never thought I could create. I discovered a new way of making art that came not only from what I saw in front of me, but also from what I imagined and felt inside my mind.
At the same time, I did not want to lose my favourite habit of observational sketching. I walked around the garden and made sketches during my first month here. As someone who enjoys drawing old buildings, I especially loved sketching the heritage houses at Rimbun Dahan. After sketching, I often stepped out of my comfort zone and experimented with new ideas. This became an important part of my art practice.
During the residency, I also faced my long-term problem of insomnia. Being awake at night gave me time to think about my emotions and inner thoughts. I wanted to connect this experience with my artwork. Through these paintings, I explore different aspects of mental health, emotions, sensitivity, and the expressions that come from my deep subconscious during sleepless nights.
The objects embedded in the paintings are like illustrations that can be imagined by the viewer’s eyes, with faces, figures, and intestine-like forms appearing in random patterns. I try to draw intricate patterns by combining ambiguous shapes, different leaf shapes, creatures, and animal parts that I found in my surroundings.
Inspired by nature, leaf shapes, animals, and my daily observations in the garden, I began creating experimental watercolor paintings with intricate, floating forms. I want to build a living visual world that reflects my own inner experiences.
This personal project began with Bipolar creatures, an idea I had been developing since I was in Yangon. These creatures slowly changed and became connected with roots, plants, and natural forms. They grew into mysterious and unique beings. The title of this project is credited to my fellow resident artist, Brisa. While viewing my artworks, she mentioned that they evoked a sense of pareidolia, and I chose Pareidolia as the title of this project.
This residency encouraged me to face the negative thoughts and emotional struggles that I usually keep inside. For the Open Day, I will share my new experimental watercolor paintings, works in progress, ink sketches on Shan Sakku (Shan paper from Myanmar), and observational drawings created during the residency. This body of work will become the starting point for my first solo exhibition in Yangon, inspired by my time at Rimbun Dahan.
