Yadanar Aung

Biography
Yadanar Aung (b.1998, Yangon, Myanmar) is a multidisciplinary artist, a story teller working across sculpture, installation, performance and sound. Her practice uses making as a form of self analysis, examining how memory, desire, fear and attachment shape the human psyche. She is interested in the different systems people use to understand and regulate their inner lives, from psychoanalysis and ideas about the brain to spiritual rituals, superstition and fortune telling. Growing up amid political instability and authoritarian control in Myanmar has significantly shaped her inner world. Her work considers how political violence enters personal memory, relationships and the construction of identity. Her early installations and performances adapted rituals for healing, separation and resurrection. These actions offered temporary relief and a sense of control, while also questioning whether ritual could produce lasting change. This contradiction continues throughout her practice. Her later works take the form of weapons, artificial organs and speculative machines. Together, they resemble equipment inside a fictional laboratory for constructing a new entity. Made from cast metal, found objects, ceramics, sound and interactive technology, these works borrow from the structures of the body and the language of machinery.

Yadanar completed a MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2025. Her work has been presented in both Yangon and London. She was a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2023. Her performance I Brew Love Potions for Sad Maidens (2021) is held in the permanent collection of Aura Contemporary Art Foundation, Japan.

Introduction

Yadanar Aung:
Her Mother Is A Witch!!!
DIANA NWAY HTWE
I remember the first time I visited Yadanar Aung’s house. It was a hot sunny day, typical Yangon weather. The house is white with ionic columns and a congested garden. An unhappy man opened the gate to let me in. When I stepped in, a portal opened, the sun was swallowed and I treaded in deep shades towards the front door. I opened to a dark living room of heavy furniture. Pungent cat piss. Cups of salt, lime and chili at the corners. To ward off evil, she explained later. I waited for Yadanar to come down. “Yadanar, your friend is here!” a screech from the top of the staircase. My friend, Yadanar, floated down the stairs.

Her mother is a witch. Yadanar is a trapped spirit of this house. She dresses like one. By the mother’s orders, she had special combs for her hair and drank from jade mugs. Trapped within her mother’s daily rituals and her father’s melancholy, her brother’s insecurities and her sister’s needs, her cats, her dogs, her exes…

Here in London, Yadanar reclaims herself. She now builds her own talismans and guards herself well with hexes. She is armed, and ready to take the universe.

A sincere artist, a stimulating friend, and a fascinating anti-hero of her own story, I present to you: Yadanar Aung.

Credits