A contemporary artist from Myanmar (or Burma), Po Po is best known for his conceptual, often abstract, work drawing on core concepts of spirituality and philosophy, particularly from Buddhism, the national religion. His work also references Myanmar’s fraught political history, authoritarianism, isolation and censorship, within which it was developed. With the gradual opening up of the country in the 1990s, Po Po was one of the first Burmese artists to have his works displayed internationally. His artistic practice, spanning painting, installation, sculpture, photography and performance, has since widely been considered through the lens of contemporary movements such as Minimalism, though it has emerged from very different contexts and concerns.

Born in 1957 in the city of Pathein in Ayeyarwady, Myanmar, Po Po grew up in a country under direct military rule and came of age during a constitutional dictatorship. He learnt about formal art concepts such as perspective and composition at the summer art classes organised at his high school by Myanmar’s education ministry, and experimented with sculpture using found material in a mechanical workshop he had access to. Despite the scarcity of and control over available reading material, Po Po was able to read works of Western philosophy, both classical and modern. Having also developed an interest in nature early on, he graduated from Pathein College (now Pathein University) with a degree in botany in 1979. The following year, he moved to the capital, Yangon, where he began working as an illustrator and graphic designer while pursuing art. 

Po Po’s early years as an artist were deeply impacted by the totalitarian rule and isolation in Burmese society. Under the dictatorship of Ne Win (1986–88), a general who led the military junta of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, heavy restrictions were placed on foreign travel and international exchange. This forced isolation affected the arts, with a lack of resources such as contemporary art publications, and direct and indirect censorship that persisted from 1962 to 2011. Emerging artists in Myanmar also struggled from a lack of patronage to experimental art, which was thought to be subversive, and faced restrictions on the depiction of nudity as well as the use of certain colours that were seen to have political connotations. 

In the 1980s, Po Po joined the Gangaw Village Art Group, which was founded by the students and graduates of the Art Centre at the Rangoon Arts and Sciences University (now Yangon University) in 1979. With pioneering experimental artist Aung Myint and the Surrealist San Minn among its members, Gangaw Village, as the group was known, provided crucial support to experimental artists, and encouraged abstract painting, installation and performance art. 

In 1987, the group mounted Po Po’s first solo exhibition, Untitled, at the Myanmar Artistic Association Center, Yangon. At this exhibition, Po Po gained distinction for breaking away from the prevalent emphasis on realism and representational painting through abstract paintings and soft sculptures. Among the abstract paintings was the 1985 quartet Tejo, Vayo, Pathavi and Apo, which drew on core concepts of nature in Buddhist philosophy — translating as kinetic energy or fire, fluidity or water, solidity or earth, and movement or wind, respectively. They were represented through the basic shapes, triangle, circle, square and semi-circle. One of his best known works from this period, Red Cube (1986) — a canvas hung at an angle overlooking a pile of rocks — references Buddhist monks’ practice of assembling and contemplating on such stone piles. Despite not emerging from any association with the art movement, the work was shown as part of the exhibition Minimalism: Space. Light. Object. (2018–19) at the National Gallery Singapore, alongside works by artists such as Mark Rothko, Lee Ufan, Anish Kapoor and Ai Weiwei. 

Another important work in the exhibition was Painting For The Blind #3 (1986), a blank white canvas dented and protruding in places through the use of nails, in an exploration of tactility and rhythm. The soft sculpture series included Narcissus (1987) — a silk bolster distended by a rope tightly tied around it and laid flat on a mirror — an abstract rendering of the tragic Greek myth of Narcissus, who is entranced and trapped by his own reflection. 

Having organised a contemporary art exhibition every year since 1979, Gangaw Village disbanded in 1988 after the military regime regained power in the wake of the student-led nationwide revolt known as the 8888 Uprising. Following this, Po Po took a decade-long hiatus from exhibiting, even as he continued creating sketches of concepts for artworks. In the 1990s, although the pressures of censorship persisted, some market reforms and reduced international isolation helped artists access contemporary art resources and gradually display their works abroad. In this period, Po Po expanded his practice to include performance art and site-specific installations alongside painting and sculptural art. 

In 1997, in his second solo exhibition Solidconcepts in Yangon, Po Po turned his attention to new materials as he revisited the fundamental Buddhist concepts in the Controlled series (Controlled Tejo, Controlled Vayo, Controlled Pathavi, Controlled Apo). He interpreted the same concepts using everyday objects like fluorescent tubes, bricks and ice blocks encased in wooden crates. During this time, he also began to fuse Buddhist precepts and practices into his works, often dramatising Buddhism in outdoor, site-specific installations. Po Po has continued to explore concepts and visual motifs from Theravada Buddhism across the decades, in works such as the performance piece Self-portrait of the Artist as a Buddhist (1998), and installations including Negative Space #8 (2007) and Road to Nirvana (1993–2013). 

In one of his first forays outside the country, in 1999 he was an artist-in-residence at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, and participated in the first edition of the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in Japan. This was followed by a number of residencies and group exhibitions in East and Southeast Asia as well as Europe in the next two decades.

A number Po Po’s works from the 1980s and 1990s, traversing a wide range of techniques and materials, were brought together in Out of Myth, Onto_Logical (2015) at the Yavuz Gallery (now Ames Yavuz), Singapore — his first solo exhibition outside of Myanmar, and the first since Solidconcepts, held almost two decades previously.

Since the 2000s, Po Po has incorporated documentation of contemporary Burmese society in his work, often with an element of humour. In his VIP Project, Yangon/Dhaka (2010–15), executed in the two national capitals, he covertly photographed people’s reactions to a VIP sign that he placed at public bus stops. Their visible deference to the sign and its implicit authority, especially in Myanmar, was a comment on the impact of state control in public consciousness.

His recent work includes the exhibition Primeval Codes (2020) in Singapore, which explores signs and symbols — from ancient Burmese scripts inscribed on stone at the sites of Pyu, Bagan, Inwa and Pinya, to modern-day road signs — through abstract geometric paintings and assemblages first conceptualised in the mid- to late 1980s. The canvas and wood works are painted primarily in red and black, colours that were banned under the Burmese junta government because of their political connotations. Aerial Message, a rope installation hung from a wooden scaffolding, draws on a broader global perspective, referencing the quipu, a documentation and accounting device historically used by Andean civilisations in South America. Po Po has continued this series in the exhibition Ascending Primeval Codes (2024).

Po Po’s work has been exhibited at several museums, galleries and major art events in Asia, Europe and Australia. It is part of the collections of institutions including National Gallery, Singapore, Mori Art Museum, Japan, Singapore Art Museum and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Thailand. In addition to being an artist, Po Po is also an art critic and has published the work Conceptual Art Manifesto (2005).

At the time of writing, he lives and works in Myanmar.