(Re)Imagine City/ (Re)Imagine Home

An Augmented Reality Exhibition on Instagram

(Re)Imagine City/(Re)Imagine Home is an Augmented Reality exhibition of Public Art hosted on Instagram. It comments on the scarcity of Public Art in Myanmar and finds alternative ways for the artists to express themselves while getting involved in the process of adding socio-cultural values to cities.

The core idea of this project is to create an opportunity for artists to imagine how they can reshape their cities' environments, to imagine putting their works in spaces they couldn’t invade with physical materials and help them create their unrealized projects virtually. In the current situation Myanmar is under, the exhibition is a way of claiming our public spaces, where physically we are not able to express ourselves at the moment.

It’s no secret that Public Art in Myanmar is scarce. Even with increasing number of graffiti on the streets, Art festivals with interactive community art projects and sculptures in public, Public Contemporary Art is yet to infiltrate much of common public places. Art in public places brings cultural, aesthetics, and economical values to the community while enriching the city with its existence. It is the uniqueness of its community while showing the evolving artistic and social taste. Public Art is scarce in Myanmar not because the artists don’t create, but because they don’t have opportunities to put their artworks in certain public places where Art can’t infiltrate unless commissioned.

This Augmented Reality exhibition is free of physical boundaries yet able to invade physical spaces and will satisfy the public hunger of a more vibrant community. This will help integrate Public Art in cities in Myanmar, digitally invading the spaces to show people the possibilities and benefits of Public Art.

Mobile Phone and latest updated version of Instagram needed to enjoy the exhibition fully. Please update your Instagram for the best experience. @re_imagine_city on Instagram.

(Re)Imagine City/ (Re)Imagine Home Poster designed by ZUNE(Thoughtform)

The project began with an Open call in September 2021. Any interested artist from Myanmar is able to apply with an artwork concept and how it relates to a public place in Myanmar.

The selection criteria is the clarity and depth of the concept and how it can effectively relate to the public place the artist has chosen.

The production process began in mid October 2021 and ended in March 2022. A total of 7 artworks were produced by 9 artists

Augmented Reality Works in Public Places

Augmented Reality has been a part of Art production for decades but it is still a rarely charted territory by artists around the world. With the pandemic forcing the Art world to rethink about art production, consuming and how art practitioners can continue to connect with public, we need more efficient, mass reaching methods for continuation. Thus, the exhibition was hosted on Instagram, a commonly used social media platform. The public was able to interact, see the artworks via Instagram feed. This method transcends time and space, and breaks barriers of 2 dimensional artworks on the gallery spaces. The public is able to interact with the artworks more closely, examine, play and get as close as possible to an artwork.

"Digital space and digitization are not exclusive conditions that stand outside the nondigital. Digital space is embedded in the larger societal, cultural, subjective, eco- nomic, imaginary structurations of lived experience and the systems within which we exist and operate."

Reading the city in a Global Digital Age , Saskia Sasen.