The line between tragedy and comedy wears thin in Htein Lin’s The Fly (2005), which sees the Burmese artist confined to a chair as he struggles against an invisible fly buzzing around his head. The agitated performance, a recording of which is on show at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery as part of Lin’s major solo exhibition Escape, was conceived while he was imprisoned in a Myanmar jail and takes inspiration from George Langelaan’s 1957 short story of the same name, in which a stray insect causes a scientific experiment to go horribly wrong. The narrative reminded Lin of the flies he encountered while being interrogated, a painful time referenced by the performance, which is both humorous and unsettling. Part way through, Lin ostensibly becomes the insect, briefly finding liberation before retiring to his seat – an allusion to the cycles of detention and freedom that have shaped his life and work.
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