Varsha Nair & Lena Eriksson: Monday 2 Monday

WTF gallery is pleased to announce a contemporary art exhibition titled ‘Monday 2 Monday' by Varsha Nair (Bangkok, Thailand) and Lena Eriksson (Basel, Switzerland).

Based on the Monday 2 Monday project started in 2011 by the artists to engage with each other in regular, rhythmic, ongoing communication, this exhibition visualizes their conversations as a 2-channel video film and on-site installation on 2 floors of WTF Gallery in Bangkok.

 Although the conversation was originally for their personal and emotional expressions, and with no fixed outcome or time frame except to connect each Monday, the project has developed into a chain of thoughts, a great trial of artistic and creative processes and personal endeavour for both artists.

Intense dialogue, whether face-to-face or epistolary has a long history among artists and cultural institutions, and has become an increasingly important concept in contemporary practice. These exchanges can shed light on how art and dialogue can occur in a proactive and planned way.

Bridging the vast distance between Basel and Bangkok, the separation becomes a mutual studio space in which the two artists exchange freely by completely opening up to each other on both professional and personal levels. The chosen topics that matter most to them, at that point in time, are shared each Monday, including personal loss and comforting, friendship, family and country histories, current social and political issues, economics, identity, philosophy, morality, globalization as well as their process of creating art — failed or successful ones.

The posts are usually very short — brief as bygone telegrams. Most are straightforward while some are planted with satire and humour. They could be considered love letters without lust but ones that speak of deep friendship and containing honesty, compassion and great effort to nurture a healthy long-distance relationship, driven purely by a need to communicate.

Lena Eriksson was born in Brig, Switzerland, and recently gained a Master degree in Art in Public Sphere from Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland. Eriksson works mainly with drawing, video, installation, performance and concepts, and prefers to develop works in collaboration. From 2004 to 2009 she established and managed “Lodypop” – an independent art space in Basel, for which she conceptualized exhibitions and brought together artists from Switzerland and elsewhere.

Varsha Nair was born in Kampala, Uganda, and studied Fine Arts at Baroda School of Art, Maharaja Sayajirao University, India. Inviting multidisciplinary collaborations her work encompasses various approaches and genres including making, writing, organising, and putting things + people together. Nair has exhibited her solo and collaborative works internationally and in Thailand, where she has lived since 1995.

Project archive at http://monday2monday.tumblr.com/

The exhibition is made possible by The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetial and Embassy of Switzerland in Thailand.