Chaw Ei Thein

Lately I have had the chance to hang out a bit with Burmese artist Chaw Ei Thein, who is truly a Renaissance woman ! She is based in Rangoon where she runs Soulflower Gallery and a children's art workshop.  She paints, does performance art, curates, writes, teaches, dances ....  
I first met Chaw Ei at the Asiatopia Symposium where she did an awesome performance piece on the current climate in Burma and delivered a paper on Performance Art in Burma. Before talking with Chaw Ei, I hadn't realised how exciting the developing contemporary art culture in Rangoon is, despite the huge obstacles the artists face. Chaw Ei gave a talk to my students about these challenges and ways that the artistic community attempts to overcome them. 

Angkrit Ajchariyasophon; Siamese Twins

Chaing Rai based artist Angkrit Ajchariyasophon spent 24 hours of the weekend of Asiatopia ‘connected at the hip’ (with the aid of a special designed canvas harness) to Hafiz, a young Singaporean fireman he had met only 6 hours earlier. This performance was inspired by the infamous congenital twins Chang and Eng Bunker, who originally came from Thailand (Siam is old name for Thailand). Angkrit and Hafiz remained connected for 24 continuous hours and as they went about their business, distributed information about the Bunker twins. Angkrit told me he was drawn to the idea of becoming a siamese twin for a day as he was interested in the construction of Thai identity as oriental, exotic and freakish.

More photos

Last year I saw a group exhibition Platform at Queens Gallery in which Angkrit exhibited an installation "The Perfect English Gentleman" which documented his transformation to being a 'perfect English Gentleman'. Angkrit is the Thai word for English.

Coming Soon - Asiatopia

In a few weeks the 9th Asiatopia (Performance Art Festival) will be held in Chiang Mai, accompanied by The Southeast Asian Performance Art Symposium 2007. I'm looking forward to seeing some new art and am particularly keen to seen performance works from Burma.

I was looking at the logo for the 7th Asiatopia festival in 2005 - and thought it was a funny coincidence that it was 'dedicated to all chickens and birds who died of Avian Flu in Asia and the rest of the world' .