Phyu Mon graduated from Mandalay University in 1985 with a BA in literature. She studied painting under Ba Thaw in 1978–1979, but became interested in conceptual art after meeting her husband Chan Aye (b. 1954) in 1980. Together, they opened a used bookshop in Mandalay where they nurtured a community of artists, writers and poets interested in avant-garde art while pursuing their own art practices. Amid the deteriorating economic conditions and increasing isolationism and authoritarianism in socialist Burma (1962–1988), P. Mon created paintings that explored her interest in alternative worlds using surrealism and conceptualism. She soon started publishing poetry and short stories, experimenting with new forms of writing, and began to develop her own performance art pieces and installations. Her first short story was featured in the University magazine in 1981 and her short story “Suffering” appeared in ဒဂုနိုမဂ္ဂဇင် Dagon literary magazine in July 1986.

One of her pivotal performance art pieces, My Self (1985), featured a cane ball used in the game of ခြင်းလုံး (chinlone) stuffed with black foam bottle-brush cleaners. The participants, all men, stood in a circle and attempted to play a game – with the near-impossible task of keeping the off-balance ball in the air. The performance demonstrated how prejudices in society, here represented by the foam inserts, whether towards women or minorities, could unravel social harmony. By the early 1990s, she had discovered Photoshop and begun to create digital collages that focused on environmental concerns and human rights. She also started to participate in modern art exhibitions in Yangon alongside exhibitions in and around Mandalay. In her solo performance Beginning for the end (1997) in Mandalay, she used balloons, some attached and other detached, but all gradually sinking to the ground once depleted of helium, to symbolise the lack of rule of law that infringed on human rights. At the University of Finland, she studied video and film production, becoming one of the first women to work with digital photography. In 2005, she created collages using digital photography to make a pointed social and political commentary about the status of women in society, the state of the environment and the fractures along ethnic lines within Myanmar national identity. In 2009, she founded Blue Wind, an association for female artists in Myanmar.