Back to BSC, my own talk focused on art and protest in Myanmar. As censorship is rolled back, art can be used, indeed is being used, as a tool of dissent. In the new environment not every creative artist or intellectual seeks to make a political statement, and that’s just fine. But many do, and headline issues such as Myitsone and Letpadaung, as well as far more mundane problems, draw abundant artistic comment and criticism. In the process, bridges increasingly link the political and creative sides of civil society.

My sense is that to date, though, most of the topics addressed at least by painters (with whom I have the closest ties) are pretty safe. Popular political heroes are celebrated. Ongoing transitional problems are documented. The need for greater democracy is promoted. Until recently, none of these matters could be tackled openly, because 50 years of rigid state censorship kept the art world on a tight leash. What we’re seeing in contemporary paintings is therefore revolutionary for Myanmar – and that’s terrific. At the same time, though, it tends not to reach beyond mainstream progressive opinion, which fully endorses deification of opposition leaders, criticism of faltering political progress, and a campaigning stance on democracy.

Largely missing, then, is any attempt by painters, and I think creative artists and intellectuals more generally, to challenge mainstream progressive opinion – notably with controversial and uncomfortable views regarding seismic issues of sectarian conflict, 969, Mabatha, and all that. I say largely missing because some work does do this. A series of paintings recently completed by Aung Soe Min is entitled “The crisis of Buddhism”. Several canvases by Zwe Yan Naing also look to be critical of monks and supportive of interfaith harmony, though his own reading does not always support that interpretation. Nevertheless, the main point is that the reasonably substantial volume of political art now being produced in Myanmar stands mostly inside, not outside, established boundaries of progressive politics.

In many ways, that’s perfectly understandable. In mid-February, a Mandalay literary event was cancelled following protest from Buddhist monks about the Muslim affiliation of three scheduled speakers. In mid-June, The Open Sky, a 20-minute documentary dealing with March 2013 sectarian violence in Meiktila, was withdrawn from Yangon’s Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival when social media erupted with aggressive criticism. Certainly, then, there are sensitivities of a magnitude that foreigners (like me) may not fully grasp. Nevertheless, it’s striking that some of the most wrenching political questions facing the country do not draw more artistic attention.

In late June I had a chance to talk with eight or nine painters about this and other things. My good buddy Ko Pyay Way from Yangon’s Nawaday Tharlar Gallery helped out. Broadly, they all felt that painters have a responsibility to protest, to bring issues to people’s attention, and to point the way to a better society. At the same time, though, their general view was that they don’t know enough about sectarian tension and violence to take a position on that. They added that they worry about saying the wrong thing and inflaming an already dangerous situation. Of course, they may even share the positions taken by 969 and Mabatha – we didn’t go there.

There are, then, real concerns and I don’t want to dismiss them. At the same time, I believe there is here an element of denial. I also feel that if, for instance, painters cannot address the most difficult issues facing transitional Myanmar, then the future is quite bleak. If not creative artists and intellectuals, then who?