Nargis Art

BBC News has posted an online gallery of crayon drawings by children who survived Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Burma last May, killing about 130,000 people and leaving many thousands more homeless. Burma's military junta heeded its own paranoia, rather than the plight of its people, and rejected outside help. Only foreign agencies already in Burma managed to bring aid to survivors in the Irrawaddy Delta. The Foundation for the People of Burma mobilised about 300 aid workers. They gave listless, traumatized children crayons and paper as therapy. The children had never seen crayons before. They drew what occupied their thoughts: Cyclone Nargis. The result is raw Expressionism, more powerful than much of the video footage that came out of Burma in May. What strikes me is how these childish drawings expose the vapid, mindless irrelevance of "artworks" that win the UK's big-money prizes.