Burmese immigrant artist Saw Naing Lin presents a world unseen by outsiders in "Fires."
A rare exhibit of paintings documenting resilient refugee life will open at CSPS Hall on May 10, 2025. The paintings chronicle new Cedar Rapidian Saw Naing Lin's life from idyllic scenes of bathing water buffaloes in his youth to his family’s tense moments of fleeing into the forest when soldiers from his own country attacked his village.
A self-taught painter, Saw Naing Lin grew up an ethnic minority in the Southeast Asian country Burma, later renamed Myanmar, whose government has fought a civil war with ethnic minority regions for the last 60 years. Without access to a cell phone or camera in his home country, Saw Naing Lin now documents from memory in colorful paintings the life he could not document while living it.
“Fires” can be seen in the Commons Gallery of CSPS Hall, a nonprofit community art center in a century-old building at 1103 Third St. SE in Cedar Rapids, from May 10 to July 10. The public is invited to an opening reception in the gallery where they can meet the artist and his family Saturday, May 10, from 5:30-7:30pm.
