I recently met up with Burmese artist Htein Lin to photograph ongoing work on his art project A Show of Hands. 

A Show of Hands is a multimedia public artwork about broken-ness and healing. Under decades of military rule since 1962, Burma became a broken country. The slow process of healing began eighteen months ago with the release of thousands of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Htein is in the process of making plaster casts of the forearms of the surviving prisoners who are returning to society to make their individual contributions as politicians, business people, teachers, journalists, activists and parents. 

When we met, Htein was making casts of the forearms of former Burmese political prisoners on London’s Southbank - just outside Tate Modern, with St Paul’s in the background across the Thames. 

I will meet Htein again in May when I visit Yangon to represent Media Academic Partners (MAP). My brief is to collaborate with artists like Htein on the setting up of Arts and Media courses throughout Burma.