Chaw Ei Thein

Chaw Ei Thein's exhibition at CATM Chelsea, September 2011

2011-09-06T00:45:00.003-04:00

Chaw Ei Thein upcoming exhibition in September

2011-08-18T00:12:00.003-04:00

Salad

2011-07-30T00:18:00.003-04:00

Salad
Installation (mix media)
2011
Art Omi Studio

THE REVOLUTIONARIES

2011-07-14T01:15:00.001-04:00

ecaeP in Kachin

2011-07-08T00:25:00.004-04:00

ecaeP in Kachin
2011
fabric + acrylic on canvas
Art Omi Studio

WEs = 2073

2011-04-18T03:40:00.004-04:00

Title: WEs = 2073

Year: 2011

Location: Grace Exhibition Art Space, New York

Performance notes from Chaw Ei Thein: Many of my friends are in prison, far away and inaccessible. There are over 2000 political prisoners in Burma. Some have been sentenced to 56 years of imprisonment, some 65, some 102. All are committed to their fight for freedom and justice in Burma, and for our people. I am lucky because I am not in prison like them. But I always think of them: how they spend their time in the prison, and how they have sacrificed. I cannot help them to be free. So I am doing this performance as a tribute to them and what they have done for us. In this performance, I explore the “poun-zan”: a form of torture common in Burmese prisons, in which prisoners must hold a physically excruciating and psychologically humiliating position for a long period of time.
My performance is their real performance in those prisons. I hope you can feel it.

CET's artist talk for Asian Contemporary Art Week, 2011

2011-03-21T23:40:00.001-04:00

The Role of Artists in Local Spaces and Global Society

Wednesday, March 30

Asian Cultural Council at Location One

6:30 pm: Dialogue with Artists + Reception

Join us for a special discussion presented by Asian Cultural Council 2011 grantees/ contemporary artists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, and Hong Kong. Artists Rahraw and Manizhah Omarzad (Afghanistan), Firoz Mahmud (Bangladesh), Chaw Ei Thein (Burma), and Fong Wah Phoebe Hui (Hong Kong) will explore the challenges and opportunities encountered in their role as artists in local art scenes while becoming increasingly engaged in global art forums. Moderated by independent curator and ACAW Director Leeza Ahmady.

Location One
26 Greene Street (between Grand and Canal Streets) - MAP
Tel: 212-334-3347
www.location1.org

CHAW EI THEIN (b. 1969, Yangon, Myanmar) is a painter and performance artist based in currently New York. She has exhibited her first solo art exhibition and performed new work at the 2004 Nippon International Performance Art Festival (NIPAF) in Japan. She continued developing and performing work for TIPALive (2005)in Taiwan, Asiatopia in Thailand (2005/2007/2008), 8 Open International Performance Art Festival in Beijing (2007,) Small East Asia Co performance art event in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Toyama in Japan (2008) and the 7*11d Performance Art Festival in Toronto, Canada. She exhibited her second solo painting show at the Espace art gallery in Bangkok (2005), the Hermes’ Ear Art Exhibition at the Nitrianska Gallery in Slovakia and Budapest (2006) and her third solo exhibition at the Balance Art Gallery in Chiang Mai.

Currently an artist in residence in New York, she has exhibited new works at the Point B Gallery in Brooklyn, United Nations Plaza and the ISCP Open Studios. She was an invited speaker at the Asia House Art Gallery in London where she presented “The Myanmar Performance Art Scene: challenges faced by Myanmar artists” during the September demonstrations of 2007. She has given artist presentations at several universities and institutions including School of the Art Institute Chicago (SAIC), Massachusetts College of Art, Brown University, Northern Illinois Universit at DeKalb (NIU) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) in New York.

Her work has been widely covered in the international arts press including Asian Art Now, Asian Art Achieve, Artforum, Art Asia Pacific, Yishu, C-Arts, The Strait Times and The New York Times.

The architectural mixed-media installation, September Sweetness, corroboration with artist Richard Streitmatter Tran with debuted at the Singapore Bienniale 2008.

In addition to her work as an artist, she is also co-founder and Director of the Sunflower Art Gallery in Yangon. In this capacity she has developed several initiatives including the organizing of art exhibitions and fairs including special exhibitions for children’s art in Myanmar and Cambodia, and for psychiatric patients. She has been teaching art to children for more than 15 years and served as Editor for a youth magazine in Yangon.

As an advocate for art, education, and creative expression, she has been a vocal critic of the restrictive curricula in Burma.

She was awarded Fellowship in connection with the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) in residence

with the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) for one year from 2009 to 2010.

Chaw Ei Thein performance at Fountain Art Fair

2011-02-28T12:53:00.005-05:00

GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE
FOUNTAIN ART FAIR
www.Grace-Exhibition-Space.com
http://www.grace-exhibition-space.com/performance.php?event_id=106

INFILTRATE! 4 DAYS OF LIVE ACTION PERFORMANCE ART ABOARD THE FRYING PAN!
WITH SPECIAL SPOTLIGHT HONORING MOBIUS COLLECTIVE AND ITS FOUNDER, MARILYN ARSEM
Grace Exhibition Space also hosts an exhibition of Performance Art photographer Bob Raymond
at the Fountain Art Fair, Pier 66 Maritime barge

Thursday 12 noon- 5:00 pm – VIP and Press Preview
12 noon – 12 am Friday & Saturday
Sunday 12 noon – 7:00 pm

Grace Exhibition Space drops anchor off the coast of Manhattan at pier 66 for this year’s Fountain Art Fair. Grace Exhibition Space’s prestigious program will be presenting a series of never-before-seen live action works by world-renowned performance artists. With a full schedule of on-site, and roving, performance art presentations on the deck.

INFILTRATE! PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL
A 4-day curated program of Performance Art “Infiltrate!” commandeers the Frying Pan with art to heave overboard all preconceived notions of art fairs. INFILTRATE! will use performance art, a non-commodity art, to explore the boundaries of expression through performance within the confines of the art market.

Featuring artists from Asia, Europe and USA with: Chaw Ei Thein [Burma], Arianne Foks [France], Sarah Trouche [France], Martine Viale and Eric Letourneau [Montreal, QC, Canada], AABier, Mark L. Stafford, Myk Henry, Rosabelle Selavy, Quinn Dukes McDivitt, Marni Kotak, Travis McCoy Fuller, Sandrine Schaefer, Phil Fryer, David Boylan, Lopi LaRoe, Jason Robert Bell, Marni Kotak, Rebecca Jampol, and Matt White. On view Friday through Sunday.

PROGRAM – artists listed by distance and alphabetically
FRIDAY, MARCH 4 and SATURDAY, MARCH 5 from 8 PM – 12 AM
SUNDAY, MARCH 6 from 12 PM -7 PM

Chaw Ei Thein (Burma) Friday 8:00 pm
Chaw Ei Thein explores the artist’s self conscious role in the engagement of social and
political issues, and the responsibility to communicate perspectives on an aesthetic level.

Arianne Foks (Paris, France) Saturday 9:30 pm & Sunday 5:00 pm
Ms. Foks is interested in the presentation of the body as a medium, its relationship to architecture, domestic objects, and its power to engage the audience and the performer in an emotional way through memory or by evocation. Her work questions desire, identity and physical or conceptual displacement. The shift of use of an object creates a shift in her identity. Her performances are a meeting between body and object, but naturally a meeting with the audience. Perhaps a love story? She has collaborated with many sound and performance and dance artists from different parts of the world to enrich her experience and create exchanges. In 2010, she presented a series of performances across Europe, in Paris, Berlin, Milan, Tallinn and Cardiff.

Sarah Trouche (Paris, France) Saturday 11:00pm
Performance is a medium of possibilities always pushing the limits of dance videos, installations, and sculptures. Performance becomes the means to experience and produce art. Close to life, Performance Art works with the public and its immediate environment. It allows the viewer to question the relationship between the work, the public and the site. I engage the idea of process, experience and presence in the context of making art. By combining making and showing with a collaborative experience, I create short-lived, unexpected situations.

Eric Letourneau (Montreal, QC, Canada) Sunday 3:00 pm
Eric Letourneau is a French Canadian media and transmedia artist, author, muscician, composer, and curator based primarily in Montreal, Canada. He uses several pseudonyms, most notably Francois Quoirez and algojo)algojo. His work has been associated with the development of acyion art, radio drama, performance art, process art, photography, sound poetry and experimental music. Since the 2010’s, Letourneau has presented intermedia works in international performance art festivals, galleries and museums.

MARTINE VIALE (Montreal, QC, Canada) Sunday 12- pm
At the meeting point of Japanese Butoh and performance art, I am concerned with the act of presence as a committed and essential action. I use my body as raw material, as a "place of experimentations and metamorphoses". My performances are mainly about exposing the vulnerability of human beings and are elaborated within a context of reduction to essentials. My work is not about sensationalism, metaphorical play or "spectacle". Through the creation of simple and drastic actions, I propose a process, that is not fixed in time and thus may evolve naturally.

AABier (NYC) Friday 9:00
AABier have been collaborating artistically since 2008, at which time they moved to Brooklyn, NY together. Their work focuses on relationships and environments. Within the situations and atmospheres that AABier create, they explore the notions of creature-comforts, territory, and flights of the imagination. They use fantasy as a metaphor for exploring relationships.

David Boylan (NYC) Saturday 9:00 pm
David Bodhi Boylan is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work questions how emotional instability can be represented by material decay. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
attached are a couple pics from the piece. haven't had a chance to edit them yet so i will send you better ones if you need them. www. davidbodhiboylan.com

Jason Robert Bell (NYC) Saturday 9:15 pm
“Feeling defiantly fringe-ish in the gallery, Jason Robert Bell’s “metaphysical portraits” are garish psychedelic depictions of human souls. Created frenetically with chalk, charcoal, oil stick and watercolor washes, these deformed apparitions, have a curiously endearing human quality to them.” From A Portrait of a Portrait of a Portrait by Michelle Levy

Phil Fryer (Boston) Friday 9:00 pm
I create ephemeral works that meditate on chaos and order, order and chaos. To witness the work is to see its birth and death, to look at the photos are to experience a fleeting memory.
To learn about my archival and curatorial activities please visit The Present Tense, as well as my collaborative work with Sandrine Schaefer.

Travis McCoy Fuller (Boston/Rome) Saturday 10:30 pm & Sunday 4:00pm
Travis McCoy Fuller is a visual, sonic and performance artist currently living and practicing in Roma, Italia. He was one of the founders and organizers of the late TEST performance art initiative in Boston, USA and is a member of the Los Angeles based artist collective Obscurities. He has exhibited his work widely throughout the US, Europe and South America. His practice includes, live sound performance, live action performance, video, drawing, murals, printmaking and experimental instrument building. Travis will be presenting a new performance at the Frying Pan called either “Which part will go first?” or "The things stars are made of" or "A dash of jackal" or "Another blink from Brahma" or a combination of these titles, or nothing at all.
Travis McCoy Fuller: www.tmf.templeofmessages.com

Myk Henry (NYC) Friday 10:00 pm
His performance work often requires the participation of the public. Henry believes that it is important for both the artist and spectator to be directly involved in the questioning process. He is especially interested in the thin divide between public and private space and through his artwork investigates the gauge of this boundary.

Rebecca Jampol (Newark, NJ) Sunday 4:00 pm
Rebecca is new to performance art. We have featured her work at Grace Exhibition Space, and are excited to watch her as her work grows. She is also the founder of Solo(s) in Newark,NJ, an artist gallery and residency. The Solo(s) Project House is a project space dedicated to showcasing and elevating creative individuals or groups that produce as one. It acts as “house” for artists providing unique studio space, as well as a creative atmosphere where they can interact with each other and produce art

Marni Kotak (NYC) Saturday 11:00 pm
Marni Kotak is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who creates interactive multimedia works in which she presents her life as art. Recent bodies of work include her My House project whereby she proclaims that everything that transpires in her home in Bushwick, Brooklyn to be art; her on-going Livesystems through which she markets her everyday activities online and sells advertising on her body; and her Found Performances – or re-enactments of real life experiences – the latest of which, Sunny Blue Plymouth (2010), was just held at Fountain Art Fair in Miami, and involved a re-enactment of losing her virginity in a glittery blue Plymouth Acclaim, as well as a collaboration with international performance art group NONGRATA to destroy that same car.
For more information, visit http://www.marnikotak.com

Lopi LaRoe (NYC) Saturday 9:30 pm
In performance she finds a freedom of expression that has an invigorating affect on her. She brings a raw, absurdist and visceral energy into her compositions. Her work is a homage to action painting, demolition, silent movies, gargoyles and meditation. In performance Lopi finds a freedom of expression that has an invigorating affect on her.

Quinn Dukes McDivitt (NYC) Sunday 2:00 pm
In an effort to further expose the community to the visual arts, Dukes aids in forming independent, emerging artist groups. She is the Co-Founder of the Independent Artist Collaborative, Off The Wall Art Group and has also received recognition by various publications including that of NY Arts Magazine. Human interactions within forced ecological and social scenarios are often primary tenets within Dukes’ work. Performance provides a platform in which Dukes’ metaphorical re-interpretations of personal relationships can exist, perish, grow and morph. Dukes currently lives and works in Brooklyn,New York www.quinndukes.com

Sandrine Schaefer (Boston) Friday – Saturday 9 pm - 12 am
Sandrine's ephemeral artwork explores cycles of the visible becoming invisible to challenge the body's endurance through duration, actions of transport and units of measure.
She is inspired by accumulative action, site sensitivity, and the promise of collaborative imagination. Most currently, Sandrine is exploring universal and paranormal language as a way to unlock the secrets of the universe . Videos of Ms. Schaefer: http://vimeo.com/5467428 Sandrine Schaefer: http://www. sandrineschaefer.com/home.html

Rosabelle Selavy (NYC) Sunday 1:00 pm
Rosabelle Selavy is a regular performer on NYC's burlesque circuit. With no formal education, she left her first and only legitimate job at a button factory in Ohio to move to New York City. She began her career as a dancer after being discovered wandering around the Port Authority bus station by a Slipper Room producer named Mr. Choade. Selavy also likes cage fight, and occasionally works under the name Gagalina.

Mark Lawrence Stafford (NYC) Friday 11:00 pm
Criminals are represented by faceless, voiceless corporate figures. They will be standing in front of a graphic image of a height chart printed on foam-core as to give clues to the height of the performers. They will be wearing business attire and a white neoprene mask protecting their identities, and instead of reciting the phrases by speaking, they will be holding ipods connected to speakers, which will have publicly issued statements of different unnamed entities that have created environmental, political or economic disasters.

Matt White (NYC) Sunday 2:00 pm
My performance-based work is always a reaction to my environment, mostly my political or social environments. Most of my performances in the past have involved me blending into my cultural surroundings. Forcing the viewers to question the legitimacy of my actions and in turn questioning their own actions.

We R NEW YORKers 2 #b

2011-02-17T02:19:00.003-05:00

"We R NEW YORKers 2 #b"
18 x 24 inches
Acrylic on canvas
2010
the way i see New York!!!!!

We R NEW YORKers 2

2011-02-03T15:28:00.002-05:00

"We R NEW YORKers 2"
18 x 24 inches
Acrylic on Canvas
2010
How I feel and see NY!!!!
;)

WET PAINT #2

2011-01-22T00:25:00.002-05:00

Wet Paint #2
Acrylic on paper, canvas, wooden frame
8 x 12 inches
2010

WET PAINT #3

2010-12-14T01:53:00.003-05:00

Title: WET PAINT #3
Medium: Water Color, Color Paper (Mix Media)
Year: 2010

Being (T)here: A Creative Panel Performance

2010-12-01T01:21:00.005-05:00

Time: December 6 (Monday) , 9:30pm-11pm

Location:	Nuyorican Poets Cafe Inc 236 E 3rd St New York, NY

Created By	Amy Bonnaffons

Being (T)here: Creating in the Borderlands
A "Creative Panel Performance"
Sponsored by Washington Square Review

Far removed from a traditional panel, the evening will explore the concept of Art in Exile via text, conversation, and live performances from writer/painter Breyten Breytenbach (South Africa), poet/painter Huang Xiang (China), and performance artists Chaw Ei Thein and Ye Taik (Burma).
...
We promise that this is not your typical panel - it will get your heart racing and your brain ticking! Come view exciting, genre-bending performances, hear the "Wild Beast Poet of China," and participate in a dynamic conversation about displacement and creation.

All proceeds go to benefit exiled artists! There's no better way to spend your Monday night!

Doors open 9:30, show will start by 10.

ARTIST BIOS:

Breyten Breytenbach was born in Bonnievale, South Africa. He studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town and became a committed opponent against the long held policy of apartheid. He left South Africa for Paris in the early 1960s. When he married a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, he was not allowed to return. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and The Immorality Act (1950) made it a criminal offence for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. In France he was a founder member of Okhela, a resistance group fighting apartheid in exile. On an illegal trip to South Africa in 1975 he was betrayed, arrested and sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for high treason. Released in 1982 as a result of massive international intervention he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship. He currently divides his time between Europe, Africa and USA. He joined the University of Cape Town as a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Humanities (from January 2000) and is also involved with the Gorée Institute in Dakar (Senegal) and with the New York University. The work of Breytenbach includes numerous volumes of poetry, novels, and essays, many of which are in Afrikaans, many translated from Afrikaans to English, and many published originally in English. He is also known for his works of pictorial arts. Exhibitions of his paintings and prints were shown in numerous cities around the world including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, Brussels, Edinburgh and New York.

Chaw Ei Thein was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1969

Huang Xiang, Chinese poet, calligrapher and dissident human rights activist, is considered, according to the Poetry Foundation, the “Walt Whitman of China” by scholars and poets around the world. His work has been banned in China for over forty years. Huang has spent a total of twelve years in Chinese prisons and labor camps (laogai), between 1959 and 1994. In 1978 he generated the Democracy Wall Movement in Beijing; he also created Enlightenment, a journal which initiated the
New Modern Democracy Movement and influenced the Misty poets, Bei Dao, Shu Ting and others. In 1997 he and his wife were granted asylum in the United States. Huang Xiang has been published in the United States, France, Taiwan, Japan, Sweden and Hong Kong. Of his twenty books, one, A Bilingual Edition of Poetry Out of Communist China, contains English translations, by Andrew G. Emerson (Mellen Press, 2004). Known as "China's Wild Beast Poet", his poetry performances are not soon forgotten.

Ye Taik is a performing artist / avant-garde dancer (Born - Rangoon, Burma).He dedicates most of his time as a collaborative choreographer, performer, curator, experimental theater artist and playwright, to discovering and developing cultural interactions through art and performance. Part of the philosophical background of Ye Taik's work has been his idea of art and performance as a language onto itself without borders or boundaries, the power of art as a vital way to initiate peaceful intercultural communication, and to develop means of conflict resolution. He is not especially attached to the concept of national identity. Circumstances have brought him to move around from an early point in his life, and he has felt compelled to continue on doing so, for this experience has made him consider things in a wider perspectives without restrictions. He has had the pleasure to work with No-Where NOW-here, The Internationalists, Vangeline Theater, Around the World in 24 hours Festival , Performa 09, Williamsburg ArtneXus, AMDat, Center for Performance Research , Collaborations in Dance Festival, Triskelion Arts and public venues including United Nation Plaza. Recently , His work is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ChawEiThein's up coming show @ Ga Gallery

2010-11-29T23:25:00.001-05:00

GIGGLING BUBBLING

December 9, 2010 – January 7, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, December 10, 6-8 pm

Jonghyun Kwon, Dreaming Village, 2005, Mixed media, 15.8” x 15.8”

Da Gallery is excited to present Giggling Bubbling, a group exhibition featuring thirty-seven artists from around the world. The art works, which hail from London, New York, Paris, Seoul, and Tokyo are the bridge that connects the art world in the celebration of the passing of one year to the next. The show includes a varied range, from paintings, prints, collages, photographs, sculptures, and a video. Highlighting the artists' different approaches to colors, materials, and subject matter, create a lively visual dialogue with the viewers in celebrating human connection with the nature.

The participating artists are Alberto Finelli, Anthony Castro, Aya Kakeda, Benrei Huang, Bo Lee, Brian LaRossa, Chaw Ei Thein, Deniz Ayaz, Elizabeth Meggs, Esther Sherrow, Eunnye Yang, Hitomi Mochizuki, Hyunyi Park, Jeremy Young, Jihoon Oh, Jinkyung Chong, Jiwoo Hahn, Jon Shehee, Jonghyun Kwon, JooYeon Woo, Jungah Kim, Kiyomitsu Saito, Kyaw Swar Thant (KST), Liza R. Papi, Lori Kirkbride, Marianna Ellenberg, Min Kyaw Khine, Mladen Stropnik, Oudi Arroni, Peter Lloyd Lewis, Philip Swan, Sarah Olson, Shingo Francis, Sooim Lee, Soorin Kim, Suhee Wooh, and Yuliya Lanina. A wonderful performance, "impossible landscapes, invisible cities" by Sarah Olson and Cori Kresge will be held at opening reception on Friday, Dec 10, 7pm.

If you have further questions, please contact us at dagallery@nykorean.org

The exhibition is made possible by non-profit organizations of Korean American Association Greater NY and the NARS Foundation

Artscenetv.net | Stories out of Burma @ Thavibu Gallery

2010-11-23T22:23:00.000-05:00

Chaw Ei Thein, Far Away in New York, 2010

2010-11-22T01:50:00.001-05:00

Chaw Ei Thein relates her personal physical
and emotional struggles
as a Burmese woman
and as an artist living in New York.

CET's stories out of Burma

2010-11-12T02:16:00.003-05:00

Invitation to art exhibition View it in your browser

STORIES OUT

OF BURMA

13 Nov - 4 Dec
by Chaw Ei Thein (New York)
and Htein Lin (London)

Curator: Shireen Naziree

You are kindly invited for the opening of the exhibition on Saturday 13th Nov 2010 at 17:00 (5 pm) at:

THAVIBU GALLERY
The Silom Galleria Building,
Suite 308, 919/1 Silom Rd.
Bangkok 10500
Tel +66 (0) 266 5454
For direction kindly see the map

Both Chaw Ei Thein and Htein Lin are recognised as Burma’s most profiled international artists. Chaw Ei Thein resides and has her artistic practice in New York and Htein Lin works and lives in London. STORIES OUT OF BURMA are their individual artistic dialogues that relates to their lives as artists in the Diaspora.

Chaw Ei Thein
Chaw Ei Thein relates her personal physical and emotional struggles as a Burmese woman and as an artist living in New York. But her most poignant expressions relate to her comparative studies between her homeland and New York. Her series of paintings relate to her transient status and her ongoing efforts to bring her artistic voice to the forefront. In her accompanying video work, Chaw acknowledges the conflicts between her two worlds.

Htein Lin
Htein Lin offers intimate views of issues that are vital to his personal world as threads of Burma continue to remain an integral part of his world. Despite having digested a very cosmopolitan outlook and developed a broad image both as a painter and as a conceptual artist, Buddhism remains a key patent both to his personal self and his art. The realization of this is defined both in his paintings and in his performance piece.

Collecting Strategies - A Question of Taste vs Investment

Not to be missed! A lecture by Phil Whittaker, Director of Sotheby's Institute of Art, Singapore.

While some people seem to have an innate sense of taste and seem to be able to construct a collection with little effort this is not common, and even the apparent ease which these collectors seem to put together a meaningful collection is often fraught with many false starts and mistakes.

In this session we will look at various collection strategies and ways of ensuring that you at least make fewer mistakes when constructing or expanding your collection.

Thavibu Gallery - 3 pm on 13th November

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ChawEiThein's up coming show in ISCP

2010-11-04T02:35:00.003-04:00

Opening Reception
Friday, November 5th, 7 - 9pm (shuttle from Grand St. subway station)

Opening Hours
Saturday - Monday, November 6th - 8th, 2 - 8pm
International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) | 1040 Metropolitan Avenue | Brooklyn | NY | 11211

ISCP is pleased to announce its Fall Open Studios, a four-day exhibition of international contemporary art. This event presents works by the 38 artists, collectives and curators from 26 countries currently in residence at ISCP and offers the public access to innovative contemporary art practices from around the world, seen for the first time in New York City. Open Studios also provides an exceptional opportunity to engage with the production, process and archives of artists and curators working with a diverse range of mediums, approaches and concepts.

Participating Artists and Curators
Birthe Blauth (Germany), Ok-Hyun Ahn (South Korea), Sookoon Ang (Singapore), Bertille Bak (France), Elisabeth Byre (Norway), Tania Candiani (Mexico), Chao-Tsai Chiu (Taiwan), Isabelle Cornaro (France), Dusica Drazic (Serbia), Marian Drew (Australia), F4 (New Zealand), Christian Friedrich (The Netherlands), Peter Gregorio (USA), Nicolás Grum (Chile), Aihua Hsia (Taiwan), Claudia Kapp (Germany), Szabolcs KissPál (Hungary), Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva (Bulgaria), Jonggeon Lee (South Korea), Nadja Verena Marcin (Germany), Armando Mariño Calzado (Cuba), Renzo Martens (The Netherlands), Michael Jones McKean (USA), Eline Mugaas (Norway), Regine Müller-Waldeck (Germany), Maryam Najd (Belgium), Alexandra Navratil (Switzerland), Sungyeon Park (South Korea), Pietro Ruffo (Italy), Ana Santos (Portugal), Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen (Denmark), Marinella Senatore (Italy), Chaw Ei Thien (Burma), Magnus Thierfelder (Sweden), Loreta Ukshini (Kosovo), Christoph Weber (Austria), Jinny Yu (Canada)

Participating Artists
Matei Bejenaru (Romania), Factory of Found Clothes (Russia), Cao Fei (China), Chen Chieh-jen (Taiwan), Jean-Marc Superville Sovak (USA), Stephanie Syjuco (USA) and Mladen Stilinović (Croatia)

Opening alongside Open Studios, Factory Makers, curated by Kari Conte initiates a four-part exhibition over the next year that takes ISCP’s site of production – a historic printing factory – as the starting point to reflect on the changing nature and idea of work in society and how we define labor today. This exhibition presents seven artists who address the impact of the world’s rapidly changing economies on new social and cultural realities. Through various approaches, the included works consider the effect of globalization, new modes of ‘outsourced’ production and the blurring boundaries of material and immaterial labor.

ISCP curator-in-residence Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva will present different kinds of artistic engagements from the Bulgarian art community and will show works presented in her recent projects The Temptation of Chalga (2009, co-curated with Vessela Nozharova), AFTER EGO (2009) and The Bold and The Beautiful (2010). Two videos, one by Boriana Venzislavova and the other by Daniela Kostova, will be screened during the presentation.

4 DIRECTIONS FROM ASIA

2010-10-06T00:37:00.007-04:00

Lee Wen

Arai

Mongkol

Chaw Ei Thein

4 DIRECTIONS FROM ASIA:

Lee Wen
Arai Shin-Ichi
Mongkol Plienbangchang
Chaw Ei Thein

[Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Burma]

Friday, October 8
9:00-11:00 pm
$5.00 Donation

Grace Space is pleased to announce the Performance Artists:
Lee Wen [Singapore]
Arai Shin-Ichi [Japan]
Mongkol Plienbangchang [Thailand]
Chaw Ei Thein [Burma]

LEE WEN

LEE WEN: “Anyhow Blues # 5” Do folk songs belong in performance art? I have just begun a new series of work called “Anyhow Blues” as a follow-up to my earlier “Too Late The Hippie” started in 2007. It’s my take on a conservative society trying to be hip, expressed so neatly in the tourism board’s slogan of ‘Uniquely Hip Singapore’ and is a vehicle for various issues that need voicing out in this troubled world, which I have put into songs and hence the “Anyhow Blues”. I started to play the acoustic guitar again for this project, and hope to work out with a band in time to come, hopefully my guitar playing improves. At the same time I am working on a tongue-in-cheek book where I will outline the “Aesthetics of Anyhow” or the art theory of the ‘anyhow’ principle of art making.
Lee Wen has been exploring different strategies of time-based and performance art since 1989. His work has been strongly motivated by social investigations as well as inner psychological directions using art to interrogate stereotypical perceptions of culture and society. He is a contributing factor in The Artists Village alternative in Singapore and had been participating in Black Market international performance collective.
He is co-organizer of “Future of Imagination” (2003), an international performance art event and “R.I.T.E.S.- Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak” (2009), a platform to support and develop performance art practices, discourse, infrastructure and audiences in Singapore. He has never been to Patagonia.

Lee Wen The Future of Imagination website: www.foi.sg

MONGKOL PLIENBANGCHANG:

Mongkol is a painter, poet and performance artist from Thailand who has performed since 1995. He is part of ASIATOPIA’s committee and has always been involved in art & social movements groups. His performances are usually very intense, mostly dealing with political sphere of Thai politics and Global situations. He has published 2 books of his drawings and poems ‘Inner & Outer’ and ‘the Man numbers Zero’ He has performed in many performance art events & festival, both in Thailand and around Asia.
He has performed in many performance art events & festival, both in Thailand and around asia. He has performances in Japan,Australia,Indonesia,Hong Kong,Macau,Korea,Myanmar,The Phillipines,Vietnam and China.He also participated in Poland’s International art festival ‘Interakje’ at Piatrkow trybunalski and the 8th OPEN International Performance art festival in Beijing;China

Asiatopa website: www.asiatopia.blogspot.com

ARAI SHIN-ICHI

ARAI SHIN-ICHI: I am a 51-year old unmarried man who gets up at 9:00 a.m. and leaves home (88,000 Yen/month: 6m x 8m, telephone bill: 10,000 Yen/month, heat, light and water expenses: 10,000 Yen/month, note: 1USD = 85Yen, 100Yen = 1.2USD ) at 9:20 a.m. Though I declare that I am an artist, basically I set off for work on a crowded train to earn money, like the average salaried worker. The only difference between them and me is that the total number of days I work varies between 5 and 20 days a month, which I have no control over.

ARAI SHIN-ICHI :ARAI lives and works in Tokyo. He has a B.A. in Chinese Modern Literature from Metropolitan University of Tokyo under Mr.llKURA Shohei.Later he majored in printmaking (Intaglio/Copper printing) from 1981 to 1987 under ex Mr.YOSHIDA Katsuro (Mono-ha group).
He also began experimenting in sound, voice and language performance actions since 1982. As a Japan Overseas Cooperative Volunteer he taught at Nyumba ya Sanaa Art school in Zanzibar, Tanzania 1992-94 where he experienced various insights into the relationship between culture and politics in contemporary society. This led to his radical social-political performances today. In his raw and direct style, ARAI's body appears as a site of social tension presented with humor yet biting criticism. Often exposing the conservative and xenophobic cultural tendencies and contradictions in global and local situations. Besides performing regularly in Japan, ARAI has also presented his works internationally and especially in China such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Xian, Chengdu, Changchun, and Beijing.(Lee Wen)

Arai website (official and unofficial): www.araiart.com

CHAW EI THEIN

Chaw Ei is a performance artist, painter and sculptor. She has been making performance art for years, and I first saw her at the NiPAF - Japan International Performance Art Festival - in 2006. Her work deals with her life experiences, especially her feelings towards her home country. In “Transformed Conversation”, a two person exhibition, New York based artist Brad Darcy and Burma based artist Chaw Ei Thein explored the artist’s self conscious role in the engagement of social and political issues, and the responsibility to communicate perspectives on an aesthetic level.

Chaw Ei Thein website: www.chaweithein.blogspot.com

This event is suported by the National Arts Council of Singapore
Photos below of: Lee Wen [Singapore], Arai Shin-Ichi [Japan], Chaw Ei Thein [Burma]

ChawEiThein's up coming show in November, 2010, Bangkok

2010-10-01T00:06:00.000-04:00

Stories Out of Burma

Categories: Burmese, haw Ei Thein, Htein Lin, Thavibu Gallery

Art Exhibition: Stories Out of Burma
Artist: Htein Lin (London) and Chaw Ei Thein (New York), Burmese
Curator: Shireen Naziree
Dates: 13 November – 4 December, 2010
Venue: Thavibu Gallery
Open: Monday – Saturday: 11:00 – 19:00

Both Chaw Ei Thein and Htein Lin are recognised as Burma’s most profiled international artists. Chaw Ei Thein resides and has her artistic practice in New York and Htein Lin works and lives in London. STORIES OUT OF BURMA are their individual artistic dialogues that relates to their lives as artists in the Diaspora. Despite distances and time, Htein Lin and Chaw Ei Thein share a common ground both personally as artists and friends that relate prolifically to their shared personal histories in Burma.

In STORIES OUT OF BURMA, Chaw Ei Thein relates her personal physical and emotional struggles as a Burmese woman and as an artist living in New York. But her most poignant expressions relate to her comparative studies between her homeland and New York. Her series of paintings relate to her transient status and her ongoing efforts to bring her artistic voice to the forefront. In her accompanying video work, Chaw lends an eloquent uncertainty to the possibilities and politics of images and their circulation through space and time as she acknowledges the conflicts between her two worlds.

Htein Lin’s series of paintings for STORIES OUT OF BURMA offer intimate views of issues that are vital to his personal world as threads of Burma continue to remain an integral part of his world. Despite having digested a very cosmopolitan outlook and developed a broad image both as a painter and as a conceptual artist, Buddhism remains a key patent both to his personal self and his art. The realization of this is defined both in his paintings and in his performance piece specifically choreographed and produced for STORIES OUT OF BURMA whereby he aims to involve the viewer an opportunity to share his Burmese heritage.

Thavibu Gallery
The Silom Galleria Building, 3rd Fl.
Suite 308, 919/1 Silom Rd.
Bangkok 10500, Thailand
Tel. (66 2) 266 5454
Fax. (66 2) 266 5455
E-mail: info@thavibu.com

Reciting Poem by CET for The Lady Of Burma

2010-09-20T23:39:00.001-04:00

ChawEiThein's up coming show in October, 2010

2010-09-19T02:41:00.002-04:00

CET's stories out of Burma #02- Jackson Heights, Queens

2010-09-03T22:14:00.002-04:00

Drop Box

2010-09-02T21:43:00.000-04:00

CET's stories out of Burma #02

2010-08-17T01:37:00.004-04:00

Title: CET's stories out of Burma #02
Medium: Print
Size: 40 x 50 cm
Year: 16 August 2010
Place: NY

WE

2010-08-02T03:12:00.000-04:00

Title: WE
Medium: Acrylic on Paper
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches

A Call for Help, A Plead for Freedom: Art and Expressionin Burma

2010-07-16T02:56:00.003-04:00

A Call for Help, A Plead for Freedom: Art and Expression in Burma
By Maris Gelman

In a land where freedom is a concept and civil rights are non-existent, Myanmar, also known by its previous name of Burma, is one of the last places expected to harbor out-spoken citizens, let alone artists. Set in the middle of South Asia, Myanmar is the sight of the longest civil war. Since 1948, when the Burmese regained power over their colonizers, the British, the country has been at war with itself. The emergence of a junta organization in 1962, which was previously called the Burma Army, but is now officially called the Tatmadaw or the Myanmar Military, the country has been ruled by a strict dictatorship. This dictatorship is known to be involved with shady decision-making. Some of these suspect decisions are such as imprisoning the democratically elected, Nobel Peace Prize winning Aung San Suu Kyi, who posed a threat to the Tatmadaw’s harsh governmental stances. They also secretly moved their capital from Yangon, a booming metropolis, to a mostly underdeveloped area called Naypyidaw. This was done without alerting any of the rest of the world, and even worse, the Tatmadaw did not inform their own citizens of this drastic change. The people of Myanmar are a muted people, they posses little power or freedom within their homeland. Those who do not align themselves with the military are given little rights, let alone the right for artistic expression. This leads me to Chaw Ei Thein, an artist who pushed the boundaries of the junta for her right to express herself through her art.

Within Myanmar, the military runs a very strict society. One could be arrested for being outspoken or even owning a book or magazine with anti-junta information in it. That is why Chaw Ei Thein is so astonishing. Her work, which eerily depicts her life as a Burmese citizen, is shown in her own gallery in Yangon. Beyond her gallery, Thein has shown her work all over Southeast Asia while simultaneously grabbing the attention of international media, such as The New York Times. Her art, which spans from painting on canvas to installations and performance art, displays themes of feeling trapped, oppressed, and even possibly raped by the culture and society she lives in. Her images and use of harsh colors depict a struggle to live within this cruel civilization. She shows the lack of freedom in her life and other’s lives in Myanmar with her art, using images of women’s struggling with men or being handcuffed. In her paintings, there is a common thread of confinement and being caged which shows her life sans freedom. She feels incarcerated in her own homeland, made to feel like a prisoner of this bloody war.
Thein sat down with a newspaper called the Irrawday to discuss her art in January 2009. The Irrawday covers news on Myanmar and Southeast Asia but is most likely highly edited or even banned in Myanmar based on its critical articles on the Burmese government. In this interview, of which the interviewer is not stated in the article, Chaw Ei Thein speaks frankly about her art, her life in Myanmar and the struggle for freedom. The interviewer asks Thein, “How do you assess the freedom of creating art in Burma?” She responds honestly when she says,
“To be truthful, there is no freedom to create art inside or outside the country. Some might think that they are free outside [Burma]. As for me, I don't feel free, no matter whether I am inside or outside. That is my problem. When I was outside the country for the first time, I thought that I was free and free to do anything. But fear rode piggyback. So before anybody censored our art, we censored ourselves. We always take into account that we have to return home.”
Interestingly, Thein’s art seems anything but censored. Its brutal honesty in its depiction of female Burmese life is anything but muted. Her work is vivid and powerful. Most of all, it captures the unrest of the Burmese people and the lack of freedom that the citizens live with daily.
Thein’s art speaks volumes about the state of life in Myanmar. It expresses the pain and fear that Burmese people constantly deal with. In her series, entitled He She I, II, III, she paints the nude bodies of both a male and female and depicts their interaction. In all three images, all very similar, there is a man standing behind a woman, holding the woman forcefully. These images, in uniform with the rest of her work, show the Burmese struggles with pain and domination. It portrays the woman being captured and tamed, kept as a prisoner in the man’s arms. Thein’s nude art, unlike other forms of nudes,
which usually depicts the beauty of the naked body, shows the unhealthy power dynamics between men and women. The woman in the series has a down-turned mouths, showing her unhappiness. The man’s snatching hands grab her chest as to control her body. Her art portrays the pain and suffering of an unheard people: the women of Myanmar.
While this bloody civil war continues, the rights and liberties of the citizens of Myanmar will remain virtually non-existent. Some people, such as Chaw Ei Thein, push these boundaries. By asserting her commentary on hardship and struggle, she is speaking out, in her own way, against the terror that the people of Myanmar have endured for over 60 years. As the dealings of the government become more corrupt, the intellectuals and artists of the country will, hopefully, continue to voice their opinions on this ongoing issue. Although the outcomes of speaking out against the government are harsh, it is important that the world can hear Myanmar’s victims shouting. The reality of Myanmar’s past, present and future is bleak. For it’s citizens, Myanmar feels like a living hell. Chaw Ei Thein is breaking free from the oppression by expressing herself. Hopefully, these efforts lead to regaining freedom for herself and her people.

CET's stories out of Burma #01

2010-07-09T00:40:00.004-04:00

Title: CET's stories out of Burma #01
Medium: Acrylic
Size: 100 x 80 cm
Year: July 2010

Happy Birthday Aunty Su!!!

2010-06-18T01:42:00.003-04:00

Title: Happy Birthday!
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Size: 8" x 12"
Date: 18 June, 2010
Artist: Chaw Ei Thein

Up to you......Up to me......!!!!

2010-06-07T04:40:00.003-04:00

Title: Up to you .....Up to me...!!!!!!
Artist: Chaw Ei Thein
Medium: Photo
Size: 24" x 18"

Opening night at Puffin

2010-05-31T13:51:00.001-04:00

all the stair way to fourth floor

seller

2010-05-30T03:13:00.003-04:00

Chaw Ei Thein's up coming exhibition in Soho, New York

2010-05-23T03:17:00.004-04:00

PUBLIC CONSUMPTION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27th through June 13th, 2010

OPENING RECEPTION:
Thursday May 27th
General Public: 6-10PM
Curated by Tanya Arakawa Rosenstein, Jillian Leigh Federman, and Kevin Bourgeois

FEATURING:
Adam Wallacavage, Alex Rickard, Alliah Sophia Mourad, Andreas Laszlo Konrath, Bob Geile, Brandee Brown, Brian Ermanski, Buddy Nestor, Curtis Kulig,Chaw Ei Thein (ACC grantee, 2009-10), David Komurek, DAZE, Edda Hansen, Edouard Nardon, Elisa Jimenez, Gordon Stevenson, Harry McNally, Heidi Hartwig, Jacob Cohen, Jake Lavin, Jeffrey Robbins, Jeremiah Mandel, John Kolbek, Jordan Seiler, Justin Solitrin, Kevin Bourgeois, Maripol, Mint and Serf, Niki Sabet, Pasha Radetzki, Pork and Spam, Red Bucket Films, Robert Waltzer, Sebastian Black, Shawn Regruto, Suzette Lee, Tristan Eaton, Van Neistat, William Robbins, and Yuri Shimojo

THE PUFFIN ROOM,
located in SoHo
435 Broome St.
NY,NY 10013
212-343-2881
www.puffinroom.org
Wednesday to Sunday from 12PM-6PM

Hanaleigh Productions is pleased to present “Public Consumption”, a group exhibition curatedbyTanyaArakawaRosenstein, Jillian Leigh Federman, and Kevin Bourgeois. This exhibition will be examining and exploring the rise of voyeurism in popular culture, the violation of the individual and by extension, the artist, and the potential cause and effect of its prevalence on our generation. Opening May 27th, 40 New York City based artists will explore the notion of voyeurism in our society using various mediums ranging from video to photography, painting and sculpture.

We have become a world of voyeurs, a voyeur generation. We like to watch others intimate moments revealed, and compare those moments to our own. Although spectatorship is far from new phenomena, today a confluence of factors - legal, social, political, and technological – has pushed voyeurism to the forefront of our image-based society. What will the lasting effects of societies increasing need to reveal and compare be?

Much of our social reality today is generated through mass-media and public content, such as television shows, video games, inter-web communication and motion pictures, rather than by direct first hand experience with people, places and practices.

Today’s fascination with peering and gazing into places, from which we typically are forbidden, has created a society of self-voyeurs. We engage in activities where we volunteer ourselves to becoming the subject and object of spectatorship.

The Puffin Room invites you to see our take on the cause and effect of the voyeuristic nature of our generation that will undoubtedly have a lasting effect on generations to come.

Stare at us staring right back at you.

Chaw Ei Thein's Performance in NARS, 15 May

2010-05-10T03:36:00.006-04:00

performance by chaw ei thein, 2010

The 3rd Annual NARS Foundation Open Studio Event
May 15, Sat and May 16, Sun 2010 | Time : 11am - 6pm
Sixty Artists Open Their Studios in Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Event Press Release
Opening Party and Event : May 15, 6pm - 9pm, Sat
Performance : Burman artist Chaw Ei Thein and
Taiwanese artists Chi Wu.

Minxie (electro pop music performance)
Non Return to Zero
(Owen Healy percussion and Sal Piccicelli on the guitar)

DJ : Michael Paul Britto

Ahomii & J.Chou Rhythmos
Edwin Peralta

Exhibition Space : “Round the Mulberry Bush” curated by Alyssa Fridgen.
The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, installation,and video artworks
by Michael Paul Britto, Scott Geyer, Cosme Herrera,
Zerek Kempf, Kyung Han Kim, Roberta Lawson,
Conor McGrady, Hyo Nam, Sean Noyce, Steev Scott,
Jessica Scott-Dutcher, Didier William, Joseph Zuccarini.
Press Release

NARS Fund Raising Exhibition (benefit show) : curated by Nunu Hung
“Stack Up” will be a fundraising exhibition for NARS Foundation
featuring affordable art by NARS and visiting artists,
curated by NuNu Hung. Application Form

Workshop : Ellen Coleman Izzo Room #404 (Printmaking workshop)

Crossing Promotion : APT Curatorial Exhibition : Studio Project Rooms

at 34 34th Street, Floor 4, Sunset Park, NY 11232
www.aptglobal.org

Partners :

Adrian Roman
Aleksandar Popovic
Anatoly Mikhailov
Anne Rosenthal
Antony Dodds
Aristidis Danylo Pelonis
Ashley S. Brown
Brian Lynch
Chinatsu Seya
Clarity Haynes
Conor McGrady
Cosme Herrera
Deborah Katie Hall
Doug Angleton

Elizabeth J. Bisbing
Ellen Coleman Izzo
Emil Bakalli
Gennadi Barbush
Griselda M. Healy
Hyo Nam
Jaqueline Cedar
Jean Boggs
Jessica Scott-Dutcher
Jinsoo Kim
Jin Kyung Chong
Jiwoo Hahn
John McGee
Joseph Zuccarini

Karin Drew
Katya Usvitsky
Kevin Noble
Kyung Han Kim
Madeleine Stern
Maia Cruz Palileo
Mark Kevin Gonzales
Masaki Takizawa
Mason Saltarrelli
Matt Held
Michael Ensminger
Michael Paul Britto
Nicholas Hamilton
Nyeema Morgan

Osamu kobayashi
Peter Emerick
Richard Castellana
Roberta Lawson
Rose Nestler
Roxanne Bohana
Scott Geyer
Sean Noyce
Sky Kim
Steev Scott
Susan Conte
TaiWoong Kang
Thabiso Phokompe
Zerek Kempf

Direction :
Train : D,N,R,M stop @ 36ST.
Drive : Take BQE south exit 23 for 39ST. right turn @ first light. Right turn at 35ST.

Contact :
info@narsfoundation.org
tel. 718-768-2765, 718-715-3044
www.narsfoundation.org

The 2010 NARS Open Studio Event is made possible by NARS Foundation

Sponsored By

MEs

2010-05-04T00:20:00.004-04:00

Artist: chaw ei thein
Title: MEs
Medium: Performance Art
Date: 2003

Review: Transformed Conversation with Chaw ei Thein and Brad Darcy

2010-04-23T03:26:00.002-04:00

Review: Transformed Conversation with Chaw ei Thein and Brad Darcy

Monday, February 22, 2010

Brooklyn’s Soapbox Gallery was hopping February 19 for the opening reception for works presented by artists Chaw Ei Thein and Brad Darcy. The DJ spun some smooth tunes, curator Nunu Hung held court, and a packed house took in the striking works of the two artists coming together under the banner of “Transformed Conversation.”

Burmese artist Chaw Ei Thein’s striking installation, “Bed,” anchored the smart gallery space, doubly occupying prime retail space in front of Soapbox’s front windows. The title is simple, but the make-up and context of “Bed” require some navigation in the heart and mind of the individual. “Bed” is, well… a bed, made of rows upon rows of upside down, glossy, bright red bell peppers, surrounded by mosquito net, topped with a black pillow and enveloped in a small room of black walls, curtains, floor, and ceiling. A single bulb hangs over the bed, tossing light off the curvy, sumptuous vegetables.

In a conversation with the artist, Chaw explained the multiple levels of meaning behind the piece. Being from south east Asia, she associates red and peppers with spice and heat, and so a bed can represent the same (steamy sexual encounters for example). This viewer, though, associates red bell peppers with sugar and sweetness, so I get an entirely different vibe. In beds, too, dreams and nightmares happen, and love making and forced sex also occur. Restful and restless nights are spent in beds. In short, there’s much to ponder with the simple presentation of a bed.

The red of the produce is bold, and against the blackness of its surroundings the color pops—it is appealing to the eye no matter what you associate with the vegetable. The mosquito net is protective, when closed it keeps the occupants safe from those nasty buzzing insects. Yet Chaw kept the net open… is that to entice? Or to reveal that protection can’t always be guaranteed with the presence of so-called protective material?

What’s more, there is no preservative applied to the peppers. They remain bold and attractive now, but as the month progresses, the peppers will crinkle, shrink, rot, ending in a less-than-appealing, smelly compost heap. The impermanence of rest? Of steamy love? Of food and sustenance? Of sensuality or fear? Of…?

Numerous emotions and questions percolate from Chaw’s work. “Bed” is a meditative piece that was difficult to leave.

New York-based sketch artist Brad Darcy took a different tack with a series of blown-up sketch paintings accompanying a digital video. The silent video looped blurs and swirls and political imagery (Obama comes up, and I seem to recall Gorbachev making an appearance). The digital blips and mixes shift suddenly as if the television had just been struck by lightning.

But Darcy’s artistry really shines on the walls. Evolution is the underlying idea winding its way through Darcy’s sketch work. His canvases are a striking mix of bold lines tracing abstract figures of faces and human forms against a backdrop of an indescribably appealing orange-red balanced by grey-checks. I had the privilege and pleasure of standing with Darcy while he flipped through his sketchbook, displaying his spontaneous moments of creativity, working through subconscious themes until POW! The images that land, that resonate most with his underlying theme of development (evolution in his work, thinking, humanity) end up (blown up) on the canvases punctuating Soapbox’s walls.

Darcy admitted he doesn’t imagine himself as a painter. He’s at home with his sketchbook. I admit that I was immediately taken by Darcy’s color schemes and bold abstracts on canvas. I would happily hang any (all) of his works in my own home and get hours of pleasure from their subtle energy. As a sketcher, however, most of his material can only be revealed to a select few. I personally hope he’ll continue to take his most inspired drawings and blow them up for the rest of us to enjoy.

Kudos goes to curator Nunu Hung for finding two disparate artists working in opposite mediums, but who bring freshness and relevance to the New York art scene. I look forward to more of her shows.

Transformed Conversation runs at Soapbox until March 18^th. www.soapboxgallery.org.

Shaun Randol

http://www.mantlethought.org

Shaun Randol is the Founder and Editor of The Mantle, as well as an Associate Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York City.

Chaw Ei Thein's up coming show in April

2010-03-16T00:24:00.009-04:00

Fardom Gallery

presents

Bedtime Stories, Monotone Dreams

Curated by Helen Homan Wu

Exhibition Dates: APRIL 9 to MAY 2, 2010

Reception: Friday, APRIL 9, 7 – 9 PM

Press Preview: Friday, APRIL 9, 6 – 7PM

Artists

ALIONA YURTSEVICH,
CARISSA PELLETERI,
CHAW EI THIEN,
KATJA LOHER,
KELLY STURHAHN,
SOL KJØK

Long Island City, NY – The Space (Fardom Gallery) is pleased to present a female group show exploring the human consciousness that exists in-between our sleep and wake states of mind. Bedtime Stories, Monotone Dreams curated by Helen Homan Wu, opens on April 9th and runs through May 2nd, 2010. Bedtime Stories will present works in various media by six contemporary female artists, both national and international, ranging from Kelly Sturhahn’s mirrors and reflections to Aliona Yurtsevich’s intricate sound compositions.

We all have at one time or another, been paralyzed during our sleep. Modern science calls it Sleep Paralysis and eliminates any possibility of it being linked to a different realm. In truth, the reality of each experience is relative and unique to the sleeper. This in-between state of consciousness is a phenomenal experience that calls for attention. For an artist, it is an inspirational moment of truth that for an average folk often it gets ignored.

Katja Loher, born in Basel, Switzerland, now based in Brooklyn, NY, will draw the viewer into her medley of universes from videos projections in sculptural objects. Carissa Pelleteri’s nostalgic stills taken from super 8 footage, feel almost as if you have been pulled into someone’s lost memory. Working with the media of traditional lines, Sol Kjøk explores the human form in every possible angle, embedded with it are deep questions about existentialism. Kelly Sturhahn tells her story in a set/stage-like manner with deliciously dark installations that has romantic notions at first glance, but on close inspection reflects another dimension. Chaw Ei Thien’s site-specific piece – The Bed – is not to be missed. Her choice of materials directly reflects the moment in flux, something so beautiful that can decay into ugliness within a blink of an eye. Inspired by technology, data bits, and nature, Aliona Yurtsevich will present an abstract composition that evokes sounds of the soul, dreams, lost memories, desires, fear, hope, movement, and emotional stillness.

Fardom Gallery, part of The Space collective, is conceived by Long Island City artist and current Space executive director Kristy Schopper. She is dedicated to maintaining and expanding the artistic community in the Long Island City, Queens area. The Space takes advantage of previously underutilized property in Long Island City, New York, to provide work space for artists, and a venue for community involvement in the arts, and works with developers and planners to ensure that there are affordable places for artists to live and work in Long Island City as our neighborhood develops and grows

FARDOM GALLERY

25-17 41st Avenue

Long Island City, NY 11101

www.Licspace.org

licspace.blogspot.com

Press Contact:

Helen Homan Wu

wu.homan@gmail.com

Mind Your Own Business!!!!

2010-02-19T23:45:00.004-05:00

Title: Mind Your Own Business!!!!
Medium: Installation
Materials: Clay, Tooth Brushes, Teeth
Year: 2010

2010-02-17T00:21:00.001-05:00

Transformed Conversation

Chaw ei Thein & Brad Darcy

February 19-March 18 2010

Opening Reception: February 19, 6-9pm

636 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY 11238

Soapbox Gallery is pleased to present the two person exhibition "Transformed Conversation" with New York based artist Brad Darcy and Burma based artist Chaw Ei Thein. In "Transformed Conversation", Mr. Darcy and Ms Chaw Ei Thein explore the artist's self conscious role in the engagement of social and political issues, and the responsibility to communicate perspectives on an aesthetic level.

Mr. Darcy has been concentrating on human evolution as the central theme of his work, and for "Transformed Conversation" his exploration consists of abstracted cyclical interpretations. Through sketches, animations, and paintings, his physically charged lines and manipulated imagery touch on various themes including mass media, connectivity, as well as natural phenomena.

Ms Chaw Ei Thein : In her latest work, "Bed", Chaw Ei Thein transforms her bittersweet memories and emotions of her exiled hometown into a meditative installation.

"Transformed Conversation" is curated by Taiwan and NY based curator NuNu Hung

Soapbox Gallery is found by sculptor James Greenfield and dedicated to providing a forum for visual artists to engage in the issues of our time and express themselves publicly without censorship. In the tradition of the humble yet mighty soapbox that encouraged free speech and played a role in the development of our social contract, provocative work can stir public debate, raise consciousness, and even spur social evolution. Too many of us despair at the lack of content in work celebrated by the ART world. Soapbox Gallery challenges artists to speak out and be relevant.

For further information please contact NuNu Hung at

nunuhung@gmail.com or 646.520.8388

Chaw Ei Thein's Performance in Grace Exhibition Space

2010-02-11T00:46:00.004-05:00

Chaw Ei Thein's Performance in Grace Exhibition Space

2010 begins with performance art from ChAw Ei [Burma] and 3 artists from Boston
[Boston, Mass + Burma]

chaweithein.blogspot.com/

"2010 at Grace Exhibition Space Begins"

Friday, February 12
8:30 - 11:30 pm
Free with donations accepted

Free beer & wine
+ live sound art by Jeremy Slater
http://www.jeremyslater.net/cv.html

Chew Ei Thein [Myanmar/Burma]

Faith Johnson [Boston,Mass]
sandrineschaefer.com/artwork/303372_Faith_Johnson_Boston_Nothing.html

Bryce Kauffman [Boston,Mass]
www.spock.com/Bryce-Kauffman-XUr071mx

Dirk Adams [Boston,Mass]
www.breathmarks.com
also co-founder of MEME Galllery, Boston
meme.templeofmessages.com/index.html

plus
Chaw Ei Thein [Burma] In connection with a residency from the Asian Cultural Council

CHAW EI THEIN [BURMA]

Chaw Ei is a performance artist, painter and sculptor.
She has been making performance art for years, and I first saw her at the NiPAF - Japan International Performance Art Festival - in 2006.
Her work deals with her life experiences, especially her feelings towards her home country.

In �Transformed Conversation�, a two person exhibition, New York based artist�Brad Darcy and�Burma based artist Chaw Ei Thein explored the artist�s self conscious role in the engagement of social and political issues, and the responsibility to communicate�perspectives on an aesthetic level.
c/o www.soapboxgallery.org/

Chaw Ei Thein: chaweithein.blogspot.com/

Contemporary Burmese art: Idea & Ideal

2010-02-03T20:29:00.002-05:00

Contemporary Burmese Art: Ideas and Ideals

2010-01-25T00:48:00.010-05:00

by win pe

by paw thame

Contemporary Burmese Art: Ideas and Ideals

16 Burmese Artists

Co-sponsored with the New York Open Center , Interfaith Center of New York, & ACC (Asian Cultural Council)

This event provides a unique opportunity for the Burmese artistic community to show the full range of their work. Emphasis is upon contemporary Burmese art as it is happening now and its diverse manifestations—spiritual, political and cultural. Seventeen Burmese artists will display their painting, photography, sculpture, performance and video art, and documentary films. The evening includes a presentation about Burmese art by Sandi Tun and discussion with many of the artists.

The artists in the exhibit include:

Win Pe (Mary Land)
Paw Thame (Texas)
Aung Kyaw Moe (NY)
Win Tun (Mr. Burma) (NJ)
Maung Maung Aung (NY)
Min Kyaw Khine (DC)
Myo Thein Htun (NY)
Min Aung Ni (NY)
Ko Myo (NY)
Kyaing Lin Naing (NY)
Than Htay Maung (Pittsburgh)
Mg Kyi Myint (NY)
Min Thant (Gregory Tong) (NY)
Aung Moe Win (NY)
Tun Myaing (NY)
Chaw Ei Thein ( )

A GALLERY OPENING and PRESENTATION

Saturday, February 6, 8pm
FREE to the Public

New York Open Center

22 E. 30th St., NY, NY 10016

For additional information call 212-219-2527 x 135

The exhibit will run for four days, through Feb. 9. Hours are:

February 6 — 8:00pm Opening
February 7 — 6:30–9:00pm
February 8 — 10:00am–6:00pm
February 9 — 10:00am–5:00pm

Once upon the time in 35th Street, 1999

2009-12-28T11:33:00.005-05:00

Title: Once upon the time, 35th street, 1999
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Year: 2005

Happy Merry X'mas To You All ,my Visitors!!!!!

2009-12-25T01:03:00.002-05:00

I Wish More Peace & Love into My, Your & Our Lives!!!!!!

Beds: Process

2009-12-20T01:10:00.005-05:00

Visitor for Beds (6-9 Nov' 09)

2009-12-18T19:52:00.005-05:00

Artist : Chaw Ei Thein
Title : Beds
Medium: Installation (Red Bell Pepper, Mosquito Net, Pillo
Place : CET's studio 206, ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program)
Year : November, 2009

Bed (cont:)

2009-12-13T03:35:00.009-05:00

Title: Bed
Medium: Performance Installation by CET
Place: ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program), NY
Year: November 06, 2009
Photo: Thein Min

Bed

2009-11-25T21:21:00.004-05:00

Bed
Installation by Chaw Ei Thein
(made out of Bell Pepper)
Photo by Miho Aikawa
November, 2009
@ISCP (International Studios & Curatorial Program) New York

Bed

2009-11-09T00:23:00.005-05:00

Title: Bed
Work: Installation
Material: Bell Pepper 100lb + mosquito net + mattress + pillow
Year: November 2009
Exhibition: Open Studio, ISCP (International Studios & Curitorial Program), New York

Chaw Ei Thein's Art Exhibition

2009-11-05T02:44:00.005-05:00

SHEs
installation
2009

time after time
sculpture/installation
2009

Dear All,

I will be exhibiting my latest art installation time after time, SHEs and paintings S--volution at ISCP, New York.

I would love to see you at the opening of ISCP Open Studios.
I really hope you all can make it. Thank you in advance!

All the best,

chaw ei thein

Opening Reception: Friday, November 6 >>>> 7-9 pm
Saturday, November 7 >>> 12-6 pm
Sunday, November 8 >>>> 12-6 pm
Monday, November 9 >>>> 2-8 pm

ISCP (International Studios and Curatorial Program)
1040 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211. USA
irection: L train to Grand St

THE ARTISTS, CURATORS and STAFF at ISCP
CORDIALLY INVITE YOU TO
ISCP OPEN STUDIOS

>> A four-day exhibition of international contemporary art
Open Studios present works by the 36 artists, artist groups and curators currently in residence at ISCP. Residents of ISCP employ a refreshingly diverse range of styles in the mediums of painting, drawing, photography, video, performance, sculpture and installation, all of which will be on view in their individual studios. Presented twice a year, ISCP Open Studios offer the public, art professionals and other enthusiasts access to cutting-edge contemporary art practices from around the world. These free events provide an exclusive peek into the production, process and personal archives of celebrated artists with global reputations, many of whom are showing their work in New York for the first time.

>> Live Music by Joel Bravo (The Albertrans)
The Albertans are not about place or pedigree. It is passage, the extremis of transmitting real bodies across the tangled wires and abstracted networks of space and person that comes through when they play. Their songs are a cartography of North America mapped on the trail of human footsteps’ fading heat signatures. It is traveling music, and they sing their songs in search of a road through territory made uncertain by love, dreams, and strange frustrations, the few directions to be heard tuned in dubiously on the last working AM radio.

http//thealbertansband.tumblr.com

Friday, November 6 - Opening Reception

>> 'NEVERandagain', group exhibition curated by Elissa Levy
Alisa Baremboym, Balam Bartolomé (ISCP), Rhys Coren (ISCP), Rico Gatson, Rena Leinberger (ISCP), Elissa Levy, Sam Martineau, Björn Meyer-Ebrecht, Austin Thomas and Ian Umlauf.
Open Studios will also provide an insightful look into contemporary curatorial practices by inviting artist/independent curator Elissa Levy to curate an exhibition for its gallery spaces. Tiltled 'NEVERandagain', the show brings together residents of ISCP and Brooklyn-based artists. 'NEVERandagain' explores media’s effect on the art-making process. Today’s technology enables artists to manipulate and edit the imagery that surrounds us, where interpretation and recreation of the future, past or present becomes possible.

November 7 & 8, 14 & 15, 12 - 6PM
November 9, 2 - 8PM
Additionally open by appointment: info@iscp-nyc.org

>> Book Launch Event: 'The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work'
edited by Wouter Davidts and Kim Paice (Valiz editions).
Luc Tuymans, Dominic Molan and Wouter Davidts will discuss this original collection of essays on the artist’s studio as critical theme and institutional construct in the arts from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Devoted to artists at work, or to individual artists and their understanding and use of the place of work, this publication features Daniel Buren, Jan De Cock, Olafur Eliasson, Eva Hesse, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Jason Rhoades and Mark Rothko.

Sunday, November 8 - 4PM

1040 Metropolitan Avenue > Brooklyn, NY 11211 > T: (718) 387 2900 > F: (718) 387 2966 > info@iscp-nyc.org > www.iscp-nyc.org

Direction: L train to Grand St

HeShe I

2009-10-30T23:30:00.003-04:00

Title: HeShe I
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Year: 2007

HeShe II

2009-10-30T01:34:00.004-04:00

Title: HeShe II
Medium: Pastels on paper
Year: 2007

HeShe III

2009-10-24T13:44:00.006-04:00

Title: HeShe III
Medium: Pastels on paper
Year: 2007

MuMO

2009-10-15T18:30:00.004-04:00

Dear all

Please join us if you are in NY!!!!
Lots of food and drinks too!!!!

Different artists from across Asia join forces in a first-time collaborative video showcase at PointB (71 North 7th Street, Brooklyn, New York). MUST MORE, Visual Voice from Five Asian Countries, presents contemporary and innovative video works created by artists from Burma, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand. The exhibition will be unveiled on Friday, 16^th October 2009, 7-11pm.

MUST MORE, Visual Voice from Five Asian Countries is a must-see video show portraying the latest trends and experiments in the videoarts field – presenting a snapshot of contemporary Asian videomaking. The showcase highlights artistic practice in contemporary and global Asia, a region signified by the explosion of images and the massive practice of imagemaking. The thirteen videos featured are not another “Made in China” mass-produced commodity, but solid works of art that resist a pictorial and/or narrative representation of their respective countries. More than any other exhibition, the videos on showcase include recent works by both emerging (virtually struggling for MoMa’s recognition) and established artists whose works represent the rapidly transforming visual culture of the region and changing state of the political and social landscape.

Behold and join!

chaw ei thein

Time

2009-10-12T17:50:00.000-04:00

Title : Time ( Installation)
Medium: Clay
Size: 14" x 7"
Year:2008-now
Artist: Chaw Ei Thein

Manuha Pagoda

2009-08-29T15:06:00.001-04:00

Title: Manuha Pagoda

Year: 1998
Medium: Water Color on Paper

HERO

2009-08-06T23:38:00.006-04:00

3:30pm, 6 August

HERO

2009-07-31T18:09:00.002-04:00

5:49 pm, 31 July 2009

HERO

2009-07-31T18:02:00.004-04:00

6:30 pm, 30 July 2009

HERO

2009-07-30T18:11:00.009-04:00

HERO

6:20 pm 30 July, 2009

Title: HERO

Size: 18"x24"
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Date: 2009

Self-portrait in 2008

2009-07-14T02:05:00.007-04:00

Immortality

2009-07-05T17:02:00.003-04:00

Title: Immortality
Medium: Acrylic on Paper
Year: 2006
Size: 24" x 18"

When I was 5 years old

2009-06-24T03:41:00.002-04:00

WE ARE IN BURMA

2009-06-14T01:57:00.001-04:00

Title: We are in Burma.
What: Nippon International Performance Art Festival (NIPAF)
Where: Kyoto, Japan
When: 2004

Our Mother

2009-05-26T03:03:00.002-04:00

Title: SHE IS OUR MOTHER
Medium: Acrylic on color paper
Year: 2005
Size: 18"x 24"

Deeply..................

2009-05-15T02:02:00.002-04:00

Chaw Ei Thein's art works showing in ISCP, New York

2009-05-02T12:52:00.003-04:00

Dear all friends,

I will be exhibiting my latest artwork at ISCP, New York.
I would love to see you at the opening of ISCP Open Studios which follows my collaborative installation "September Sweetness" with artist Richard Streitmatter -Tran at the Singapore Biennale 2008. Attached is the invitation card for the event. I hope to see you there!

All the best,
chaw ei thein

Here is a jpeg of all the scheduled events for Open Studios weekend. Please circulate!

SHE

2009-05-01T16:24:00.000-04:00

Title: She
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
year: 2006
Size: 140 x 100 cm (1.4 x 1 m)
Description: Portrait of woman reflecting her interest in women's lives as well as representing her questions and answers about her own place in the world.

NUDE (2)

2009-04-13T00:24:00.004-04:00

Title : Nude (2)

Size: 106 x 160 cm

Medium: acrylic on canvas

Year: 2008

The Semigwa Dance is a traditional Burmese dance in which a dancer performs intricate movements while holding candles or other materials in the palms of their hands. this dance has been perverted to become a form of torture. One man explains:

"At this time, prisoners were punished through a method called the Semigwa dance. During this torture, prisoners are made to crawl on gravel on their knees and elbows with their feet and hands up in the air, holding onto handfuls of gravel, while singing. If they do not sing smoothly or can not crawl, the authorities whip them with Bamboo batons. All the other prisoners are forced to watch this.

Torture report (Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma))

Setting up my Studio at ISCP, Brooklyn

2009-03-18T09:23:00.002-04:00

Setting up my studio at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, made possible by the Asian Cultural Council (ACC).

NUDE (1)

2009-03-12T01:51:00.002-04:00

Title : Nude (1)

Size: 106 x 160 cm

Medium: acrylic on canvas

Year: 2008

Nostalgic

2009-02-16T15:03:00.003-05:00

Title: Nostalgic (U Pain bridge)
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 20" x 18"
Year: 2001

Chaw Ei Thein's Artist Life

2009-02-08T11:35:00.003-05:00

mizzimanewsTV
January 23, 2009

In This Dark and Closed Space - 11

2009-01-26T13:25:00.004-05:00

Title: In This Dark and Closed Space - 11
Material: Acrylic on Canvas
Year: 2008
Size: 153 x 63 cm

In This Dark and Closed Space - 7

2009-01-21T10:59:00.004-05:00

Title: In This Dark and Closed Space - 7
Material: Acrylic on Canvas
Year: 2008
Size: 50 x 60 cm
Exhibition: 3rd solo show at the Balance Art Gallery,Chiang Mai,Thailand

In This Dark and Closed Space - 8

2009-01-14T13:36:00.003-05:00

Title: In This Dark and Closed Space - 8

Materials: Clay pot, Stones, Acrylic

Year: 2008

Exhibition: 3rd solo show at the Balance Art Gallery,Chiang Mai,Thailand

In This Dark and Closed Space - 4

2009-01-10T15:32:00.004-05:00

Title: In This Dark and Closed Space - 4
Mixed Media Collage
Materials: Flag and Monk's Robe
Year: 2008
Size: 120 x 80 cm
Exhibition: 3rd Solo Show at the Balance Art Gallery, Chiang Mai,
Thailand

September Sweetness | Artforum

2009-01-08T14:41:00.004-05:00

Dear all friends and readers!!

Our installation in the Singapore Biennale, September Sweetness, gets a mention.
See here:
http://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=200901&id=21721

THIS PAST FALL, with the consecutive openings of six “Asian biennials,” the deliquescent 1990s and early-2000s trend toward establishing new large-scale exhibitions in increasingly far-flung locales bore fruit, such as it is. And as might have been anticipated, these shows were also attended by the repeatedly aired critiques that such efforts do little more than adapt a late-nineteenth-century model of display to newly ascendant societies; and, further, serve as highbrow smoke screens cynically deployed in the service of nationalist political regimes, neoliberal economic interests, or narrow municipal agendas. But to make either of these points in the present context is to pick up a debate that has, in fact, faded in the years since the first Gwangju Biennale of 1995. Back then, recall, questions about globalization, and about the place of “Asia” (always a problematic concept in and of itself) in this new order, plagued the intelligentsia. Just a short time earlier, economist Ezra Vogel had paternalistically anointed South Korea one of the “four little dragons” driving the region’s economic growth and political progress. Somewhere along the line, though, the “little dragons” (the others were Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore) became the “Asian tigers,” and the terms of the debate shifted away from what 2008 Gwangju Biennale artistic director Okwui Enwezor calls “the anxiety of the periphery.”

In the intervening years, biennials and triennials in the region proliferated rapidly, spurred on by ever-more-confident metropoles and their rivalries. Taipei got one in 1998, Shanghai in 2000, Yokohama in 2001, Guangzhou in 2002, Singapore in 2006. This year, these shows joined Sydney and Gwangju as points on what organizers called the “Art Compass”—an emerging-market redux of the 2007 European “Grand Tour.” But even before this latest grand gesture of art tourism, there was something shared and celebratory about this group of exhibitions. The 1998 Taipei Biennial, for example, launched with a weirdly poetic statement from its ubiquitous artistic director, Fumio Nanjo, perhaps the genre’s key practitioner: “Asia is aglow today. Asia destructs, constructs, and transforms.”

It was against this backdrop that Enwezor set to work on this year’s Gwangju Biennale, engaging as a kind of starting point the May 18, 1980, citizens’ uprising against South Korea’s military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. The biennial in fact was instituted to commemorate this event, which initiated a trend toward democratization and civil society. Enwezor is fascinated by the uprising: In it, he finds a story of civil unrest and democratic progress with nationalist and anticolonial implications that countervail what he sees as the “tendentious display of historical narcissism” characterizing the West’s ongoing nostalgia for the Paris Spring of 1968. He writes:

Paris tends to be focused almost exclusively in the past, while Gwangju is caught up in a ritual of annual passion over the meaning and symbolism of May 18. At the same time, representations of the two tend to associate with two distinct historical legacies: the modernist avant-garde on the one hand and the peasant and anti-colonial resistance on the other. Yet, whatever the distinct differences between Paris and Gwangju, or the modes in which they are commemorated, what is indisputable is how they each set in motion a fervent belief in the politics of spectacle.

And how better to respond to spectacle than through a deadpan homage to the semantics of the global corporatocracy? Enwezor titled his biennial, which closed in November, “Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions” and structured it as a series of distinct interventions united only by an unstated set of aesthetic considerations, subsumed within a simple temporal framework. The largest of three subsections of “Annual Report,” titled “On the Road,” comprised restagings of thirty-six exhibitions—ecumenically drawn from venues around the world, institutional and commercial alike—that had taken place during the period preceding the biennial’s opening. This core unit of “twice-born” exhibitions (the term, from the Sanskrit dvi-ja, is that of biennial cocurator Ranjit Hoskote) was punctuated by forty-eight “Insertions” of single artists and collectives, and spread beyond the main five-gallery Biennale Hall into the nearby Gwangju Museum of Art and the far-off Uijae Museum of Korean Art.

The success of the exhibition came to rest on a curatorial bricolage (a favorite Enwezor term) of flow and juxtaposition. Thankfully, he is a master of this modality. In one narrow corridor, for example, two Insertions—Area Park’s early-’90s black-and-white photographs of South Korea’s pro-democracy protesters and of the demilitarized zone, and Daniel Faust’s ironic, William Eggleston-ish meditations on the working class and built environment in Alaska—hung across from each other, both groups of photos evincing, in very different ways, a Robert Frank–like sense of the artist as observer of his own nation. Upstairs, a pared-down version of Taryn Simon’s American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, a series of images of little-seen centers of power (such as the art collection at CIA headquarters and the contraband room at John F. Kennedy Airport) shown in March 2007 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, took its place next to Hans Haacke’s January outing at Paula Cooper, also in New York. (Haacke’s iconic Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 was displayed on the wall separating the two artists, in what appeared to be a formal nod to the evolution of American-style institutional critique as well as a poignant acknowledgment that American-style democracy and capitalism remain deeply flawed.) Praneet Soi’s painted miniatures of war-on-terror atrocities inhabited a downstairs gallery at the Uijae Museum, whose permanent collection (included in “On the Road”) houses work by Uijae Huh Baikryun (1891–1977): One of Korea’s last acknowledged masters of another traditionalist pictorial tradition, the ink-and-wash mode known as literati painting, Uijae was an early advocate of the South Korean farmers’ movement, which can be seen as a precursor to May 18, and strongly resonates with the political address of Soi’s miniatures. Yes, there were also veterans of other recent biennials—Steve McQueen’s Gravesend and Thomas Demand’s Yellowcake, both on view in Venice in 2007, to name two—and no shortage of rotely repackaged New York and London gallery shows (Gerard Byrne from Lisson, Isaac Julien from Metro Pictures, etc.). But in the end, Enwezor’s curatorial position of anti-thematization paradoxically allowed linkages and variances to articulate themselves with the subtlety usually sought, and less often achieved, in thematic shows.

A group of distinctly curated “position papers” elaborated parallel, perhaps ancillary points consistent with the biennial’s overall agenda. Patrick Flores’s “Turns in Tropics: Artist-Curator” offered a comparative meditation on four examples of this hybrid figure and on their influence on the Malaysian, Philippine, Indonesian, and Thai scenes of the ’70s and ’80s. The show-within-a-show functioned both as historical object lesson—Apinan Poshyananda, now an elder-statesman intellectual, was making video spoofs with a VHS camera in Bangkok in 1987?—and scholarly thesis, advancing a claim consistent with Enwezor’s highlighting of the bricolage of the periphery. In keeping with the logic of juxtaposition, an “Insertion” of darkness, mazes, and mirrors by Ken Lum, himself an artist-curator, filled out this gallery at the Gwangju Museum of Art. Claire Tancons’s “position paper,” “Spring,” a dramatic, Caribbean-inspired procession around the traffic island at the epicenter of the May 18 protests, was among the biennial’s highlights, and struck me as the perfect instantiation of what Enwezor claimed to seek in “the link [the biennial] makes to the uprising by using the spectacle of street protests as a symbol for establishing an open structure of cultural interaction.” One could simply never conceive of such a procession—a whimsical riff on an earlier student protest, this one featuring contributions by various artists and culminating in the burning of MAP Office’s bamboo-and-rice-paper floats—happening in Beijing or Shanghai. And yet the state here was fully on board. The next morning, Enwezor’s thumbnail visage smiled out at me from the front page of the government-run Korea Times.

GWANGJU’S NATIONALIST and regionalist agenda, and Enwezor and company’s meditation on that agenda, seem almost baroque in their complexity compared with Singapore’s unabashedly transparent conflation of art and real estate (a marriage officiated by authoritarian technocracy and bankrolled by speculative capital). If ever there was a curator who knew how to work this liminal zone, it is Fumio Nanjo. Now the director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Nanjo—who maintains a consultancy offering “a wide range of services in [the] art field”—is the Prometheus of the Asian biennial: Taipei, 1998; Yokohama, 2001; Singapore, 2006. Singapore, which loves nothing so much as stability, decided to retain him for a second go as artistic director. In return, they got things like a spreadsheet providing the exacting viewer with each artist’s year of birth, residence, and preferred “genre.” This year the biennial’s theme was simply “Wonder,” following on 2006’s “Belief.” In the two-page essay at the front of a giveaway guidebook that is the exhibition’s only publication, Nanjo writes, “To experience wonder is to open one’s mind.” He goes on to cite the dictionary definition of “wonder,” and concludes with the statement: “Art is now becoming a part of people’s lives.” The audio guide is brought to you by Bloomberg, and the all-venue pass includes a discounted ride on the Singapore Flyer Ferris wheel. You get the picture.

Upon arriving in Singapore, I met a group of Malaysian curators and artists at an outdoor bar in the Tanglin Camp complex, a former military base that had been the main site of the 2006 biennial. It was now home to a Ben & Jerry’s, wine bars and fusion restaurants, and furniture stores, none of which had been there two years before. Perhaps this illumination of the stakes of the previous edition colored my trek among SB2008’s venues the following day. By the harbor, on the Central Promontory Site (“with 360 hectares of prime land for development,” per the guidebook), a Shigeru Ban pavilion made from shipping containers housed a few unrelated marquee works: Hans Op de Beeck, the Kabakovs, Anthony McCall. The core site was the recently vacated city hall, which was newly encaged by chain-link barriers in anticipation of the Singapore Grand Prix a week later. The staid Brit-colonial civic building is not a horrible exhibition venue. Video installations occupied courtrooms, while downstairs, a boutique invite-only art fair called Showcase Singapore scattered twenty-some galleries into a maze of former clerks’ offices. But the works given the most prominent locations were astoundingly bad: In the central atrium, a layered acrylic abstraction by Singaporean painter Jane Lee; in the former barristers’ cafeteria, a grouping of fiberglass maggots by Pham Ngoc Duong and fetus-shaped gourds in formaldehyde by Han Jong-Gun; in another main hall, Wit Pimkanchanapong’s Singapore, a Google Earth floor map of the city, on which viewers could mark their favorite places with Post-its. It all felt like a high-rent exercise in vaguely premised, gesturally biennial-esque art.

However, to the credit of Nanjo and his team, which also included Matthew Ngui and Joselina Cruz, the curatorial tentacles of this biennial extended far beyond the standard international fare. Nanjo’s position as a man about Asia has allowed him to build a network that draws in works like the short films of Kyrgyz artist Aktan Abdykalykov. And there were some successful works, particularly in the South Beach Development, a cluster of ’30s Deco army barracks just blocks from downtown. Heman Chong served up a room of wall paintings made from office-supply stickers, and Dinh Q. Lê presented The Farmers and the Helicopters, 2006, a sculptural and video meditation on Vietnamese peasants who try to build their own Huey. Working with Myanmar artists Chaw Ei Thein and Aung Ko, Richard Streitmatter-Tran constructed a pagoda in the Burmese Buddhist vernacular, made entirely of sugar. This was perhaps the most compelling interpretation of Nanjo’s easy theme: sculptural space at once referencing traditional architecture, white-cube Minimalism, and visceral sensation. By the third day of SB2008, the pagoda was covered in flies.

IT IS TEMPTING to read the Yokohama Triennale as an unarticulated hybrid of Gwangju-style cultural localism and Singapore-style speculative boosterism. Yokohama shares some of Gwangju’s self-consciousness about its perceived peripherality, even though (or perhaps because) it is Japan’s historic port of entry and lies just thirty minutes from downtown Tokyo by subway. And like the Singapore Biennale, this triennial has been a vehicle for converting sites like the nineteenth-century Red Brick Warehouse, on the waterfront, into pleasant places to eat, drink, and shop. There is even a Ferris wheel. The municipal authorities are sophisticated enough, or at least technocratic enough, to hand the artistic reins over to (Western or Western-validated) specialists. And so the all-star curatorial team paired three of the busiest curators in Europe (Daniel Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Beatrix Ruf) with Akiko Miyake of the Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu and Hu Fang of Vitamin Creative Space, the latter a savvy gallery in Guangzhou that has a proven genius for parlaying widespread skepticism about the rote commercialism of most Chinese art into curatorial authority and financial gain.

These five were handed a theme, “Time Crevasse,” by artistic director Tsutomu Mizusawa. “Art shakes up our everyday perceptions. . . . It can horrify us, give us courage, console us, or provide us with what we need to face life,” Mizusawa noted in a brief text reminiscent of Nanjo’s that was the only elaboration of the exhibition concept anywhere in sight. But scant narration does not necessarily equate with aesthetic failure, and the crevasse proved capable of engulfing A-listers and up-and-comers alike. The show centered on the Shinko Pier exhibition space, with an agile system of plywood walls designed by Ryue Nishizawa duly deconstructing the white cube. The selection of seventy-two artists would feel familiar to anyone who knows the curators—a perfect equilibrium of the long-canonized (Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, Matthew Barney, Douglas Gordon, Paul McCarthy, Joan Jonas, Rirkrit Tiravanija), the recently canonized (Mark Leckey, Tino Sehgal, Paul Chan, Jonathan Meese, Miranda July, Cao Fei, Terence Koh, Jérôme Bel), and the hopefully soon-to-be-canonized (Mario García Torres, Shilpa Gupta, Pak Sheung Chuen, Pedro Reyes). This being Japan, there is a significant conceptual and performance-based history with which to engage, and a second-floor film archive in the Red Brick Warehouse presented a stunning selection of works from the Fluxus moment and its aftermath, with pieces like Atsuko Tanaka’s Round on Sand, 1968, and the collective Hi Red Center’s Shelter Plan, 1967. This was echoed in a substantial program of new performances realized in the few days surrounding the opening—works by Jonas, Meese, and Aki Sasamoto among them.

And yet in the end, Yokohama appeared an almost archetypal instantiation of the international exhibition format, impeccably designed and unrelentingly cool, with no particular political or curatorial agenda anywhere in sight. Perhaps Obrist was saving the agendas for his Frieze-week Manifesto Marathon happening later that month. Or perhaps this utter subsumption of local into transnational, of site into space, marks the twilight of the “Asian biennial,” which may prove, to twist another Obrist biennial title, a genre that never should have been named.

Philip Tinari is a contributing editor of Artforum.

----
Best,
cet

Grand Opening Night of Balance Art Gallery

2008-12-15T13:48:00.010-05:00

Photo series of September Sweetness Installation on the outside wall

with Som

In the garden (Balance Art Gallery & Hmwe)

Ma May Nyein is taking photo

Dear All Friends,

Thanks a lot!!!!

Best wishes,
cet

My solo art exhibition Invitation

2008-12-10T11:28:00.003-05:00

Dear Friends,

At last, I could settle down my exhibiting date today.
This is my latest artwork from this week in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I would love to see you if you can make the opening.
Attached is the invitation for my third solo exhibiton.
I'll be sharing the information online later!

Best,

Chaw Ei Thein

In this dark and closed space

2008-12-09T01:51:00.013-05:00

Title : In this dark and closed space
Event: 10th Asiatopia International Performance Art Festival
Location: National Stadium BTS station (MBK)
Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre, Bangkok
Date: 9 November, 2008

CHILD ART

2008-11-30T01:40:00.005-05:00

At Last............

2008-11-28T13:57:00.006-05:00

I have got those photos from http://www.flickr.com/photos/uchu75/3031457917/in/photostream/.
(Thanks a lot Nisa!)

Chaw Ei Thein

Chaw Ei Thein's exhibition at CATM Chelsea, September 2011

Chaw Ei Thein upcoming exhibition in September

Salad

THE REVOLUTIONARIES

ecaeP in Kachin

WEs = 2073

CET's artist talk for Asian Contemporary Art Week, 2011

Chaw Ei Thein performance at Fountain Art Fair

We R NEW YORKers 2 #b

We R NEW YORKers 2

WET PAINT #2

WET PAINT #3

Being (T)here: A Creative Panel Performance

ChawEiThein's up coming show @ Ga Gallery

Artscenetv.net | Stories out of Burma @ Thavibu Gallery

Chaw Ei Thein, Far Away in New York, 2010

CET's stories out of Burma

STORIES OUT

Collecting Strategies - A Question of Taste vs Investment

ChawEiThein's up coming show in ISCP

4 DIRECTIONS FROM ASIA

ChawEiThein's up coming show in November, 2010, Bangkok

Stories Out of Burma

Reciting Poem by CET for The Lady Of Burma

ChawEiThein's up coming show in October, 2010

CET's stories out of Burma #02- Jackson Heights, Queens

Drop Box

CET's stories out of Burma #02

WE

A Call for Help, A Plead for Freedom: Art and Expressionin Burma

CET's stories out of Burma #01

Happy Birthday Aunty Su!!!

Up to you......Up to me......!!!!

Opening night at Puffin

seller

Chaw Ei Thein's up coming exhibition in Soho, New York

Chaw Ei Thein's Performance in NARS, 15 May

MEs

Review: Transformed Conversation with Chaw ei Thein and Brad Darcy

Review: Transformed Conversation with Chaw ei Thein and Brad Darcy

Chaw Ei Thein's up coming show in April

Mind Your Own Business!!!!

Chaw Ei Thein's Performance in Grace Exhibition Space

Contemporary Burmese art: Idea & Ideal

Contemporary Burmese Art: Ideas and Ideals

by paw thame

Contemporary Burmese Art: Ideas and Ideals

Once upon the time in 35th Street, 1999

Happy Merry X'mas To You All ,my Visitors!!!!!

Beds: Process

Visitor for Beds (6-9 Nov' 09)

Bed (cont:)

Bed

Bed

Chaw Ei Thein's Art Exhibition

HeShe I

HeShe II

HeShe III

MuMO

Time

Manuha Pagoda

HERO

HERO

HERO

HERO

Self-portrait in 2008

Immortality

When I was 5 years old

WE ARE IN BURMA

Our Mother

Deeply..................

Chaw Ei Thein's art works showing in ISCP, New York

SHE

NUDE (2)

Setting up my Studio at ISCP, Brooklyn

NUDE (1)

Nostalgic

Chaw Ei Thein's Artist Life

In This Dark and Closed Space - 11

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