C a r e.
Exhibition exploring the concept and artistic ways of community care and collective trauma healing
Care is perhaps an act of healing of self and other. Care can mean reaching out, connecting, talking, understanding and bonding. It helps us form relations with our surroundings and provides a deeper understanding of self and relation to others. In this exhibition, we will be artistically exploring how we can care or connect to our immediate communities that we are in and form cluster systems, which can help create or rebirth new ways of survival tactics, self empowerment, a deeper understanding of self to re-become full person or to reclaim full life under precarious situations.
This exhibition platform will be a catalyst of care. The spaces between the word “C a r e” are for us to fill, to see where we fit in this care system the exhibition provides, looking at models of care to see what they tell us and how we connect to it.
Curator
Phoo Myat Thwe
Artists
Zun Ei
ZUNE (Thoughtform)
Khin Thethtar Latt
Aung Nyein Chan
Soe Yu Nwe
“We all come from the goddess, and to her we shall return.” Here the goddess refers to the mother earth, the very material that trees and plants grow on to give humans food and shade among many other benefits, which also geographically dictates our identities, privileges, political and social well-being. The material that is naturally soft to the touch, in the current man-made sociopolitical climate, can bind and trap us. To her, we lose our love. To her, we lose our hope. And one day we return to her.
Paper Sculpture from Facing the Life! Workshop by Zun Ei
Photo Documentation of Facing the Life! Workshop by Zun Ei
Photo Still of Virtual Reality Space, Dead Man's Reverie by Zune Ei Htet
REBORN, Performance Video by Khin Thethtar Latt
Tree of Life, Augmented Reality Work by Aung Nyein Chan.
A Mournful Song, a pair of ceramic sculptures by Soe Yu Nwe.
A Mournful Song, a pair of ceramic sculptures by Soe Yu Nwe.
Initially, the lineup for this exhibition was not mainly focused on soil. It was initiated as a program that finds ways to artistically explore methods of connecting, caring and healing amidst the various crises that surround us. After many reschedules and artist changes, we have arrived at the final result of the exhibition today, and I must admit it cannot have turned out better than I had hoped. From Khin Thethtar Latt’s repeated kneading, forging of soil to rebirth herself and take herself away from sorrow, ZUNE (Thoughtform)’s artwork depicting the connections of the living and the dead through the Mother Tree (Tree of Memory), Soe Yu Nwe’s attempt to cement the memories of the departed through clay, the continuous death and rebirth circle of fallen leaves from Aung Nyein Chan’s Augmented Reality artwork, to Zun Ei’s Facing the life! workshop, we have tried to find solace for our loss and grief through our works. Like trees in a forest that is always connected to each other underground, under the soil, where they share nutritions and communicate with each other, this exhibition is perhaps our forest network, trying to distribute our little acts of care to the visitors.
Photo Documentation by The &Cut Production and Aperture Blade
My interest in curatorial work has so far not been in creating a space of presentation, but experimenting space as a tool of gathering and connected actions. The word “curate” comes from the word “cura” in latin, which means care. As the curator who manifested this program, I thought it was fitting to name it Care. and explore the dynamics of care, connectivity and coexistence in soil, plants and humans, while pondering about the underlying tones of motherhood and care work which you might experience in some of the artworks here.
Exhibition Poster Design by Zun May Oo
Little plant pots were distributed to the visitors as an act of enduring connected action after the exhibition. There is care & intimacy in looking after a plant. From watering, growing, day to day care, as the plant blossoms, the visitor connection with the exhibition remains as well.
C a r e. Exhibition took place in Yangon at Goethe Instiut Myanmar Auditorium, from 26th July to 1st August 2022. The exhibition explored the concept of “Care”, what kind of activities/ actions could belong to this expression. The exhibition examined artistic ways of community care and collective trauma healing, which is seen as essential work for the public after the February 2021 coup in Myanmar. The exhibition welcomed more than 500 visitors in the span of 4 days that it exhibited. Programs such as art therapy workshop and a symposium to discuss the subject of Care were also included. C a r e. project's goal is to artistically find ways of community care, ways of being together and healing together. Art can constitute unconventional ways of gathering and expressing. We wanted to use this nature to help people emotionally during these difficult times.
C a r e. Project supported a total of 5 artists who displayed a diverse range of artistic expressions from art therapy practice, performance, sculpture works to new media works such as virtual reality and augmented reality, which are rarely exhibited in exhibition spaces in Myanmar. Furthermore, it also included a practice of constructive criticism and reflection in the processes of art-making and community engagements. C a r e. Exhibition invited art and cultural professionals in Myanmar to reflect on Care-centered works and how it is practiced in Myanmar. It also discussed about Trauma Art in Myanmar and how it should/ should not be practiced. An art & cultural column writer was also invited to review the exhibition and programs afterwards.
Due to its various engagements, C a r e. ended as a multidisciplinary project that invited the art&cultural working professionals of Myanmar and the public to gather in a space together, to connect, understand and care for one another, an intimate and much needed action considering the situation Myanmar is under since early 2021.
The project begun in November 2021 and ended in July 2022.
C a r e. Symposium
C a r e. Symposium focused on methods of care as well as critiquing the way such methods are practiced in Myanmar. The symposium also gave space to discussion about how trauma can be expressed in art without focusing on violence and gore, traits of which most political artworks from Myanmar usually consist. The symposium aimed to create discourses on criticism and alternative expressions to trauma art.
Programs
Curator Talk
Curatorial Work as a Care Practice and Why it is necessary in Myanmar.
Speaker: Phoo Myat Thwe
In this talk, the curator ponders about invisible curatorial labor behind exhibitions, the converging traits of curating and caring, looking at the etymologies of curate and care, and how curatorial work must be practiced as care work in the context of Myanmar.
Artist Talk
Speaker: Khin Thethtar Latt, ZUNE (Thoughtform), Soe Yu Nwe, Aung Nyein Chan, Zun Ei.
Moderator: Phoo Myat Thwe
Participating artists in the C a r e. exhibition share about their projects and practices.
The panel discussion focuses on three questions:
1) What are the ethics and responsibilities of an artist working with trauma be it personal trauma, exploring collective trauma, or supposedly healing it?
2)Are art based therapy or care projects really helping communities? To what extent can they help? What should art-care practitioners be careful of?
3) What do we think is the purpose of Trauma art? How should we look at it/ critique it?
Panel Discussion reflecting on Trauma/ Trauma Healing Art
Speakers: Diana Nway Htwe, Zun Ei.
Moderator: Phoo Myat Thwe
Keynote by Diana Nway Htwe
Methods of Memorialization and Trauma Art
The full content of the exhibition, artist statements, and the symposium can be read on the C a r e. Exhibition book below.
Care Exhibition Book on Academia.edu https://www.academia.edu/97543666/C_a_r_e_Exhibition_Book
Visual notes by Khin Myo Htet for Diana Nway Htwe's Keynote, Methods of Memorialization and Trauma Art.
C a r e. Project, Exhibition and Symposium. Curated & Directed by Phoo Myat Thwe.
This project is supported by Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Yangon, Myanmar.