Maung Day, The Guest at Night

In April 2022 – almost a year after a series of wars broke out between the Arakan Army and the Bamar Military in the area, Burmese artist Maung Day took a trip to Arakan Land. On this trip through Sittwe, Mrauk-U and other small Arakanese towns, he brought along a drawing book, into which he sketched out the sights of his journey. Upon returning home, he redrew many of these sketches.

Of this drawing, Maung Day writes:
"The nights in the Arakan Land – and in other places throughout the country – are the stuff of horror and destruction. Thieves, thugs, military men, and revolutionaries on secret nocturnal missions come out and prowl in the shadows. The streets are empty and the communities fall asleep shrouded in the darkness of fear. The next morning, there will be news shared at the markets, in the teashops and on the streets – the news of murders, thefts, arson and so on. I wanted to capture that reality in a drawing by creating a metaphorical devil-like creature roaming the marshes and the quiet, dark neighborhoods. The landscape in this drawing came from a photograph I took in a village."