After the First Day

After the First Day emerged from an unexpected shift in Tun Unt’s thinking during ARTICO RESIDENCY 2026. On the first day of the Residency, Tun Unt created By the Ayeyarwady, a work rooted in a recognizable place and the everyday lives of local boatmen around Buupaya in Bagan. By the second day, however, his direction had changed. Rather than continuing with the landscape and narrative of the previous work, he followed a new idea that developed through his experience of the first day. The resulting painting marks a clear departure. The identifiable landscape disappears, the figures move to the foreground, and the cool blues of the earlier work are replaced by an intense field of red and orange. Four figures remain, but they now inhabit a less defined space, allowing the work to move away from a specific location and toward a more open, expressive composition. Created on Day 2, After the First Day was not part of Tun Unt’s original direction for the Residency. Instead, it records a moment of change within the creative process itself — when one day of making, observing, and experiencing opened the possibility for something different the next. In this sense, the work reflects an essential part of the Residency: not simply the opportunity to produce a finished artwork, but the space for an artist’s thinking to shift, respond, and move somewhere unexpected.

Tun Unt

Born in Yangon in 1966, Tun Unt is a Myanmar artist and the son of renowned painter Maung D, from whom he began learning art at an early age. He started his professional creative career as a screen-printing designer and comic artist, with his first published comic artwork appearing in Tharaphu Magazine. He later continued his artistic studies under Maung Nyo Win (U Nyo). Tun Unt held his first solo exhibition, LOVE, at Myo Kyaw Gallery on Pansodan Road, followed by his second solo exhibition at Ahla Thit Gallery in 2006. Since then, he has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions. In March 2026, he presented My Unknown Number, his 10th solo exhibition, at MGB Gallery. He continues to develop his distinctive artistic practice through ongoing experimentation and exploration.

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