As part of the Partage des Arts festival, the gallery Retour De Voyage presents a monumental work by Burmese artist Htein Lin : a 4 x 2.55 m canvas, titled On the Road to Nirvana. A true spiritual and political fresco, it tells a story that blends travel, memory and meditation.
The artist's story
In August 2007, when two of his paintings had just been acquired by the new US embassy in Yangon, Htein Lin was preparing to return to Myanmar. Already checked in at London airport, he was informed that his wife Vicky’s visa had been canceled, and that he might face reprisals upon arrival. The reason : the exhibition of his prison paintings, then covered by the media in London..
Instead of giving up, the couple turned this setback into a pilgrimage. .. Heading to Bodh Gaya and other major Buddhist sites in India and Nepal.
On the road from Sāvatthi to Rajagaha, their car broke down. Htein Lin unrolled the massive canvas he had brought with him — “a bit crazy”, he admits, but it allowed him to embrace the freedom of painting large after years of confinement in a narrow cell. On that vast cloth, laid on the asphalt, he first drew a circle, then the lions of the Ashoka Pillar, undisturbed : the road was deserted.
That evening, back in Sāvatthi, he found shelter in a Burmese monastery. Its spacious prayer hall, vast and silent, gave him room to continue : he painted scenes from the Buddha’s life, from birth to ascension. “I was already used to painting Buddhas”, he recalls, “since I was doing so in prison”. »
After returning from India, the work remained unfinished. It was only in 2020, after practicing Vipassana meditation daily, that he added in the lower part of the canvas figures of meditating yogis. At last, the painting was complete.
A road to awakening
Through this work, Htein Lin connects the personal and the universal. The story of a political exile merges with the spiritual path traced more than 2,500 years ago by the Buddha : the way to break free from the cycle of rebirth, samsara, and attain nirvana.
That is why the artist gave his canvas this title: : On the Road to Nirvana.
