SAI ██████

Arts Award | Nominee | Freedom of Expression Awards

Sai █████ is an ethnic minority artist and human rights advocate from Myanmar whose work, rooted in the aftermath of state violence, is undertaken at life-threatening risk.

The resistance is deeply personal. On February 1st, 2021, the first day of the coup, his father, an elected Chief Minister, was abducted. The junta sought to use Sai as leverage against his father, forcing him underground for 244 days, hiding above an interrogation center. In 2024, a military airstrike destroyed their family home. His father remains a political prisoner, held in maximum-security isolation.

Sai confronts state terror directly. His project, Trails of Absence, began with sneaking into his mother's house arrest compound for evidence. Now, with support from Magnum Photos, it has expanded to document testimonies of kidnapping, tort

ure, and state killings. He co-founded the Myanmar Peace Museum, an archive for justice against military crimes, and is the sole individual in Myanmar to file a complaint with the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

He is currently co-curating Constellation of Complicity (Bangkok Art and Culture Centre), exposing global machinery of authoritarianism and to establish global network of artists and activists to fight against global oppressions in solidarity. Mounting this show in Thailand is a deliberate defiance, placing him at risk of arrest and deportation by the junta's allies.

Believing that silence is a luxury the disappeared never had, Sai has briefed the US Congress and UK Parliament, turning testimony into strategy. He doesn’t make work to impress institutions; he makes it to outlast them.

“Being shortlisted by Index on Censorship is beyond recognition, it is a shield of solidarity. Authoritarian regimes thrive on erasure; our duty as artists is to build counter-archives of memory that outlast their violence. To be seen in this struggle is to be reminded that silence will never have the final word.

"But the truth is, the greatest recognition must go to those who cannot be here: the imprisoned voices. From Mohamed Tadjadit in Algeria to my father, Dr. Linn Htut, and the more than 30,000 political prisoners in Myanmar, and to countless others around the world, their absence is the most powerful presence among us. This space belongs to them.”