Moe Satt: Rest the Thumbs on the Cheekbones

Where musings on resistance and experiments on embodiment fuse into dance.

Rest the Thumbs on the Cheekbones, the first European solo exhibition by artist Moe Satt from Myanmar, brings a new commission alongside recent and early works in conversation to showcase the artist’s relentless, dynamic exploration of embodiment, identity, and political resistance. The exhibition builds on Satt’s two-year residency at Rijksakademie from 2022-2024 as well as his 2020 residency at Delfina Foundation, and extends into a collaboration with Tate Modern on a new iteration of his performance f n’ f (face and fingers) (2008) in The Tanks.

At the forefront of a generation of artists from Myanmar that emerged in the 2000s, Moe Satt is most known for his conceptual, performance, and video works that experiment with his own body as a field of symbolism and sense making. The exhibition title is excerpted from his artist book f n’ f (face and fingers) (2024), which details how to transition through his choreography of 108 combinations of face and fingers. It also highlights Satt’s recent interest in expanding the notion of embodiment beyond his own body through instructions, participatory installations, and group performances.

A majority of Moe Satt’s works draw on the social-political turbulences of Myanmar and wrestle with oppression and censorship. Storyline (voted/gun/revolution/thumbs down) (2024), for instance, outlines four significant political chapters in the recent history of Myanmar through four hand gestures, all symbols of collective sentiment and actions. Pinky Say Something (2024) juxtaposes bullet cases with wax cast of pinky fingers in red, a sign of recent voter participation in Myanmar. Placed on a hot plate, the work evokes visceral feelings of an imminent threat and points to the erosion of civil rights. Although rooted in concerns with his homeland, the work also speaks to the wider insurgence of conflicts and violence in many other parts of the world, as Satt rethinks his identity as a diasporic artist.

Satt’s acute observation of and reflection on everyday forms has been evident throughout his art practice over the past two decades. Hand Around In… (Yangon, Busan, Jogja) (2012-19) brings together three early videos into a video installation for the first time to offer a poetic and comparative study of ubiquitous hand movements across three Asian cities with significant meaning for Satt.

His long-term study of body forms is, however, not limited to human beings. The site-specific commission Hunting and Dancing (2024) consists of monochrome images of Satt’s hands interpreting gestures used in African hunting and Southeast Asian dancing that are silkscreen printed onto window blinds at the foyer of Delfina Foundation, welcoming visitors. At a time when political tensions around certain hand gestures are high (such as the German city of Bremen banning the “silent fox” gesture due to its close resemblance to the “wolf salute”, a controversial gesture given its links to a far-right political party in Turkey), the work reminds us of the often complex, multiple histories behind symbols, thus taking on new relevance. The blinds installation also plays with the dual nature of the Delfina House—usually when the blinds are up, it becomes a more public exhibition space and workplace; when the night falls and the blinds are rolled down, the house returns to a private space for the international art practitioners in residence.

Artist biography

Moe Satt (b. 1983, Yangon, Myanmar) is a visual and performance artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. He founded the Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Yangon, Myanmar and has participated in live art festivals throughout Asia, Europe and the US. He has featured in several group exhibitions, most recently The Spirits of Maritime Crossing – a Collateral event of the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2024) and documenta fifteen (2022). His works have been collected by the Tate Modern, Singapore Art Museum, Kadist Foundation, and TBA21. He completed an Artist Residency at Rijksakademie (2022 – 2024) and at Delfina Foundation (2020).