Amar Kanwar
The Torn First Pages, 2004-2008

19-channel video installation (b/w and color, sound), aluminum frames, 19 sheets of paper, steel tables, books
38 min (videos)
Overall dimensions variable
Co-commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
and Public Press, New Delhi


The Torn First Pages is a three-part installation on the political and humanitarian situation in Burma (Myanmar), which consists of a 19-channel video installation. For this piece, Kanwar drew inspiration from the story of a book-dealer in Mandalay who was imprisoned for tearing out the first page of every book. These pages bore odes to the military regime and taunts addressed to the democratic movement in Myanmar.
The Torn First Pages is also an ode to the thousands engaged in the struggle for democracy in Burma. The films directly, elliptically and metaphorically encounter resistance and the struggle for a democratic society, contemporary forms of non-violence, political exile, memory and dislocation.

The videos from part one of The Torn First Pages are: The Face, Thet Win Aung (a&b), Ma Win Maw Oo, The Bodhi Tree and Somewhere in May. The various parts are based to some extent on film and video material shot clandestinely in Burma. Kanwar was in contact with the Burmese resistance movement and trained ‘amateurs’ to shoot footage surreptitiously for inclusion in his work. Some of the material, however, was shot outside Burma in India, Europe, the US and Thailand. In The Face we see footage of general Than Swe, head of the Burmese junta who, in 2004, visited Rajghat, the site of Gandhi’s cremation. Swe’s visit was extremely controversial.  The general is known for being very particular about his media representation but Kanwar managed to video Swe as he scattered rose petals at the hallowed place.

The installation’s second part is devoted to interviews with members of a Burmese community in Fort Wayne, Ind., one of whom tracks down the émigré poet Tin Moe (1933-2007), a prison survivor. The third part is archival, with films secretly made in Myanmar of pro-democracy demonstrations. In one astonishing sequence, thousands of red-robed Buddhist monks fill city streets in silent protest.


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Part I Six projections, Sound./Silent
The set The Bodhi Tree, 2005 Video, Colour, Sound, 7' 4'',
The Face, 2005 Video, Colour, Sound, 4' 35'',
Thet Win Aung, 2005 (a & b) Video, B&W, Silent, English subtitle, 4' 35'',
The diptych Ma Win Maw Oo, 2005 Video, Colour, Silent, 4' 35'',
Somewhere in May, 2005 Video, Colour Sound, 37'', English subtitle

Part II Seven projections, Sound, 24' 53''
Part III Six projections: 3 Silent and 3 with Sound 23' 26''

Amar Kanwar-- The Torn First Pages (Part I)
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2008

Amar Kanwar was born in New Delhi in 1964 where he continues to live and work as a filmmaker. Kanwar studied at the Department of History, Ramjas College, Delhi University, and at the Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. After making a few films, Kanwar joined the People's Science Institute in 1988 as a researcher on occupational health and safety in the coal-mining belt of Madhya Pradesh in central India. He returned to filmmaking in 1990, and his films were then shown primarily in public campaigns, community spaces and film festivals in India and across the world. Kanwar's filmmaking practice challenges the limits of the medium in order to create complex narratives traversing several terrains such as labour and indigenous rights, gener, religious fundamentalis, and ecology. In 2002, Kanwar was invited to exhibit at Documenta 11 in Kassel whereupon his work has also been presented in several art exhibitions and museums. Connecting with diverse audiences, in multiple public spaces, Kanwar also participated in the next editions of the Documenta exhibition in 2007, 2012. and 2017. He has been an eminent voice in film and art for the past two decades

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