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BART WAS NOT HERE / KYAW MOE KHINE [b.1996]



Kyaw Moe Khine (b.1996), professionally known as Bart Was Not Here, is a Burmese artist in exile based in New York. Rooted in graffiti culture and raised on bootleg subcultures, his visual language evolved out of  subversion, fiction, and a practiced investment in narratives. Working across large-scale canvases, sculptural installations, figurines, and drawings, Bart constructs sprawling narrative worlds inhabited by recurring characters and shapeshifting motifs.

Born and raised in Burma under military dictatorship, he grew up alienated by a broken school system, religious orthodoxy, and the inability to assimilate into conservative Burmese culture. Graffiti became his first tool of agency at age 13, adopting the pseudonym Bart Was Not Here to conceal his identity. With limited access to global culture, he found a window through dial-up internet and bootleg markets, absorbing foreign films, literature, and numerous subcultures as maps to other worlds.

Bart’s practice walks the line between aesthetic seduction and anti-aesthetic resistance, blending cinematic composition with gallows humor, internet semiotics with folklore, and conventional beauty with disobedience. Drawing from a wide net of visual influences ranging from media smuggled through satellite dishes and black markets to canonical art history, his work engages themes of violence, voyage, worship, agency, and myth-making.

Bart graduated in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore in in 2018. He has exhibited internationally in New York, Paris, London, Oslo, Hong Kong, and Yangon. In 2021, following his involvement in the resistance against Myanmar’s military coup d’état, he went into exile. He was artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2021–2022) and at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York (2023-2024). His recent work continues to push toward unstable forms and narrative thresholds, disassembling what is sacred, familiar, or fixed.


RESIDENCIES


2021-2022
Cité Internationale des Arts. Paris,France.
2023-2024
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. New York,New York.
2024
Potato Farm Project/EFA North Fork. Long Island, New York.





SELECTED EXHIBITIONS




2025
Dazzling Wings, Trapez. Zürich, Switzerland.

2024
Two Realities with Antoine Félix Bürcher, Temple Gallery. New York, USA.

2024
Myanmar Graffiti Timeline, The American Center. Yangon, Burma.

2024
WTB - Reunited, Myanm/art Gallery. Yangon, Burma.


2023
Cement,Tail of a Gecko,Temple Gallery and Tutu Gallery. New York,USA.
2023
We Are The Seeds,Open Society Foundation. Berlin,Germany.
2023
PhotoClimat 2023. Paris,France.

2023
Fighting Fear II : It Goes Without Saying,16 Albermarle Project Space. Sydney,Australia.

2023
MyanmarBike: A Culture of Remembrance. Berlin,Germany.

2021
Fighting Fear(As a part of Photo Climat 2021). Paris, France.
2021
Fighting Fear. Oslo,Norway.
2021
Myanmar Voices: We Are Still Here,Karin Weber Gallery. Hong Kong.
2021
Fighting Fear: What’s Happening In Myanmar,16 Albermarle Project Space. Sydney,Australia.
2020
Singapore Festival,Lim Ching Tsong Palace. Yangon,Myanmar.


2019
Word Therapy(Sakar Ahla Ku Htone) by Facebook,The Secretariat. Yangon,Myanmar.
2019
08:06:06,Moon Gallery. Yangon,Myanmar.
2019
Street Art and Urban Art in Yangon.American Center Yangon.
2019
God Complex,Myanm/Art. Yangon,Myanmar.
2019
Playing Time and Space,Intersections Gallery. Singapore.
2019
Seeing Through Buddhism. Sri Lanka.
2018
Devotion & Protest,Intersections Gallery. Singapore.
2018
StART Art Fair (As a part of Akroyd Art).Saatchi Gallery. London,UK.
2018
The Lasalle Show,Lasalle College of the Arts. Singapore.
2018
Vice Versa,Lasalle College of the Arts. Singapore.
2017
Roc And Roll,Myanm/Art. Yangon,Myanmar.
2016
ROAR : ULNEASHED, Myanm/Art. Yangon,Myanmar.
2016
#MONOCHROMACY, The Rough Cut. Yangon,Myanmar.
2015
Yangon Street Art Festival, Institut Francais. Yangon, Myanmar.
2015
Seeing With Digital Eyes, Lasalle College of the Arts.  Singapore.
2014
Lasalle Open House 2014, Lasalle College of the Arts,  Singapore.
2013
Urbane Folklore :Innsbruck. Innsbruck,Austria.
2013
2nd Rendezvous Southeast Asia Urban Art Festival. Yangon, Myanmar.
2012
Clap 1 2 3, Dagaung Gallery. Yangon, Myanmar.