Htein Lin at HMP Grendon

In May 2025, Myanmar artist Htein Lin exhibited new work at HMP Grendon, Europe’s only wholly therapeutic prison, where Ikon has produced artist residencies since 2014. HMP Grendon’s art studio is the only curated gallery inside a prison in the UK, hosting a programme of exhibitions including work by prisoner artists and presentations reflecting Ikon’s exhibition programme.

Soap Carvings (2025), a series of twelve soap sculptures, was presented with a film of Htein Lin carving each object at his home studio. The artist learned this practice while incarcerated as a political prisoner in Myanmar from 1998 to 2004. These sculptures, made from Burmese soap made in government factories (imports of soap and toothpaste were banned by the military junta in 2021), follow the same pattern, depicting a figure trapped inside a prison cell. Soap carving is also a practice commonly seen in prison art in the UK, given the availability of the material and relative ease with which it can be moulded and etched.

The exhibition’s centrepiece is a painting depicting several prisoners at Grendon. Htein Lin worked from prisoners’ self-portraits made in January and February under the instruction of Grendon’s Artist in Residence, Dr Simon J. Harris. Freehand charcoal self-portraits were made over the course of four weeks using small prison mirrors (approx. 10x10cm), subsequently photographed and sent digitally to Myanmar.

At Grendon, prisoners are usually serving long sentences and rarely get the opportunity to see artwork by artists based in countries like Myanmar. The prison community reflected on the unlikely nature of the project in that international contemporary practice and prison art can share the same space despite the barriers of distance and confinement.

We would like to thank Htein Lin, Kyel Sin Lin, Vicky Bowman, Dr Simon J. Harris, Frances Carey and Grendon’s prison residents and prison staff for making this ambitious project possible. Art at HMP Grendon is funded by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.

James Latunji-Cockbill, Producer – Art in Prisons