Tasneem Gallery is pleased to invite you to the exhibition El Fragmento Eliminado of works by the artists Ernesto Leal (Havana, 1971) and Htein Lin (Myanmar, 1966). In this proposal the artists examine spaces of exclusion and silence, containing very well defined rules of obedience, against which they react with strategies of replacement, elimination and staging, as alternatives to counteract the effects of the boundaries and controls.

Ernesto Leal continues his research on the word and the text, as base elements of the construction of reality, through the printing on paper the work named Intuition 1 and the installation The Removed Fragment. The artist explains: “We sense the world through rankings and words that we remember or learn, knowing first the name and then the thing. We interact more with words than with factual realities”.

Htein Lin’s work is based on his extraordinary life experiences, political developments in Burma and its deep Buddhist faith. His personal life experiences: exile, years of prison, his political activism is a vital process in a constant state of reformulation. It is these intense biographical moments that trace in a simple manner, his general poetry, reflected in Homage to Burma’s political prisoners and Homage to the monks of Burma the two videos presented at the exhibition.
About the artists:

Ernesto Leal graduated from the Art Academy of San Alejandro, Havana, Cuba in 1990. During the 80 he belonged to the group Arte Calle. His work has been exhibited at LACMA, in the 7th Istanbul Biennial, National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, in the MADC, San Jose, Costa Rica, at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New York, at the University of Salamanca, at the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico. D.F, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico and the Havana Biennial.

Htein Lin studied law at university, became involved in Anyeint (Burmese Popular Theatre), and led the 1988 student protests in favour of democracy. Before being jailed in 1998, he was a pioneer of performance art in Burma. He currently lives in the United Kingdom, and his work has been exhibited in the UK, US, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, at the 2007 Venice Biennale, the Singapore Fringe Festival 2010, and a Clark House Initiative curated show for the parallel programme of the first Kochi- Muziris Biennale.