ARTISTS
Chaw Ei Thein relates her personal physical and emotional struggles as a Burmese woman and as an artist. “We play many roles. In my studio, I am an artist. When I am commuting on New York’s subway I am someone else, possibly just another misplaced migrant.” Just as the foreignness of New York is protective, her own foreignness ensures her certain invisibility. Thus, her explorations of her domestic space and the transcendence of its confinement open onto a new territory of a cold and unknowable city. Chaw spends a great deal of time commuting on New York’s subways which has become an intimate setting of dialogue and exchange for the artist. The melange of the subway’s activity with its distinctive social scenes and galvanizing energy and its constantly shifting contexts has emphasized how her own isolation is laced through New York’s complex social fabric. As Chaw explores territory and the process of identification, she reveals an extraordinary flexibility and absolute ubiquity.
