Image courtesy the artist.

Po Tu Tu

Visual Artist, Performer, Story Teller

Po Tu Tu is a Karen man born in Burma who grew up in a refugee camp. He is a visual artist, performer, story teller. Po first connected with MAV in Bendigo by exhibiting in Chrysalis at Dudley House and went on to create a story from the perspective of a tree in Once Upon a Tree. He performed in the TerryandTheCuz production of Sk!n and recorded an audio story for Punctum Inc’s. Public Cooling House.

Po is passionate about live performance, and in mixing the Karen language and English to express themes about his homeland and contemporary life as a person of colour in Australia. He is currently working with MAV as a Cultural Facilitator to strengthen capacity, connect and engage the Karen community in Bendigo with arts and cultural activity

Image courtesy the artist.

Artworks

Karen Traditional Weaving by Po Tu Tu, Paw Kyi Pai and Mu Moo

Po Tu Tu

"The project that I was doing is about Karen Traditional Weaving, about how we weave and how we traditionally make our clothes. It is very important for us because it is a heritage that we learned from our great grandparents and we want to keep alive by teaching our younger generation. I am hoping my video will be shared amongst wider communities so other people can learn of our tradition and how unique our style and process is."

Projects

Past project

Duniya Behter

Wed 11 Aug 2021 - Sat 30 Jul 2022

Duniya Behter shifts the mainstream narrative about people with migrant and refugee backgrounds, from vulnerable to capable. Women and young people in Bendigo and Shepparton drew from their cultural roots, to build creative businesses and produce new digital creative works. The name, Duniya Behter, emerged from conversations with young Cultural Facilitators employed to work on this project and it speaks to the spirit and intention of MAV’s regional Victoria program. It is a reflection of some of the cultures in Bendigo and Shepparton where the project is based. Duniya means the world in Arabic, Hindi and it’s also found in the languages of Swahili, Hazaragi, Urdu and Persian, where it holds a similar meaning. Behter means better but working together to make better.

MAV has a profound commitment to arts and artists shaping the narratives that define who we are as a multicultural nation.

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With the deepest respect MAV acknowledges that we live, work and celebrate on unceded Aboriginal land. We thank all Elders, past and present, for their care, knowledge and generosity, as custodians of the world’s oldest continuing culture. We pledge our support towards truth telling, reparation and decolonisation. We open our hearts and minds to deep listening, learning, sharing and connecting – in solidarity with First Peoples here in Australia and around the world.