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

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

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

"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

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

WET PAINT #2

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

WET PAINT #3

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

Being (T)here: A Creative Panel Performance

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.