Kyaw Min Htet

Photo: Kyaw Min Htet, Cosmo Teratoma 2024-2025, a sculpture series, found object and organic materials. Size variable. 

Artworks and Projects

Recent Project

Cosmo Teratoma

Sculpture Series using Organic Materials, 2024, exhibited at the May Bank Artist Residency in Malaysia, 2024.

Cosmo Teratoma is a series of sculptures assembled from organic materials such as coral skeletons, jewel beetle wings, and sea urchins, alongside artificial materials like glass beads and resin. The underlying concept is that everything is a different configuration of stardust, interconnected in ways we cannot fully comprehend. The title refers to a type of tumor that can grow organs, teeth, and hair-a result of glitches in the codes of our flesh-bound existence. I wanted to create specimens of these kinds of phenomena, but instead of flesh and blood, I imagined them composed of everything-manmade or natural.

I began collecting organic textures seen in humans, animals, plants, and natural landscapes both macro and micro-to build a visual lexicon and uncover the thread that connects all of these elements. The project started with a guiding concept: to create tumor-like growths resulting from primordial forces colliding and collapsing into one another, configurations of stardust going rogue. The material selection and assembly techniques were informed and developed by this concept. The tactile experience of handling materials led to unexpected combinations and complexities that the guiding concept alone could not articulate.

Deconstructing materials such as coral skeletons and sea urchins and reassembling them resulted in configurations that deviate from their natural patterns and inherent recognizability, essentially becoming a foundation for more intricate structures.

The process became one giant feedback loop. Each piece informed the others as they were developed simultaneously. The tactile pairing of different materials resulted in biomimetic details, including cells dividing and multiplying, bioiridescence, bioluminescence, single-celled organisms, and more. Many of these details remain invisible at first glance, but upon closer examination, every square centimeter of these sculptures is packed with details suggesting otherworldly biomimicry, mutation, vitality, and parasitism. This effect is achieved through immense labor, experimentation, and obsessive detailing, all guided by the concept of the project.

Despite their size, these pieces demanded an unexpectedly high level of attention to detail, and the complexity of the detailing is heightened by their sub-millimeter scale. Cosmo Teratoma is a meditation on our interconnectedness with both the macro and micro worlds, the cruelty, indifference, and grotesque beauty of the unseen forces that govern the universe.