Htein Lin – Ingenuity (Curated by Louis Ho)

Richard Koh Fine Art (Singapore) is pleased to present Ingenuity, a solo exhibition by Burmese artist Htein Lin, curated by Louis Ho. The exhibition opens at RKFA Singapore, Gillman Barracks, and runs from 14 November to 19 December 2026. It is Htein Lin’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Htein Lin spent several periods in prison under Myanmar’s military regime, and that experience has shaped his life and practice. In Ingenuity, he turns the routines, escapades and cruelties of detention into stark visual narratives. The exhibition looks at incarceration as a system of socio-political control, and also as a setting where resourcefulness and humour carry on under pressure, often in unpredictable details of everyday life.

The works offer glimpses of daily life in detention, drawing on the inventive ways his fellow prisoners resisted. The stories range from the surreal to the improvised, and include moments of unexpected solidarity. One concerns a cat burglar who learns English in jail so that he can rob banks abroad. Another describes cooking water by wiring metal spoons to a light socket. A third follows a chess master who plays two opponents in neighbouring cells entirely from memory.

Htein Lin does not present these anecdotes only as accounts of political oppression. Instead, he reconstructs a world shaped by a constant negotiation between irony and simple human dignity

HTEIN LIN (b. 1966, Myanmar) is a Burmese artist (painting, installation, performance), curator and writer. Htein Lin practises vipassana meditation daily, and a major inspiration for his work is Buddhism whose themes, stories and philosophy he incorporates in his art. Still based in Myanmar, he is a Founding Member of the Association for Myanmar Contemporary Art (AMCA), founded in 2021, and remains determined to share his art and experience with a new generation of artists and the wider public.