Busui Ajaw

Born in 1986, Chiang Rai. Lives and works in Chiang Rai.
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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 part of the Akha ethnic minority in Chiang Rai. 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. 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. Busui exhibits widely in Chiang Rai and Bangkok.