Today is the third and final day of collaboration for Tiger Translate Copenhagen.
I’m updating this blog right now surrounded by 12 hardworking Danish, Chinese, Thai, Mongolian and Singaporean artists.
It’s like a United Nations meeting of artists here. All of them are putting their finishing touches on their respective artworks in time for the exhibition tomorrow.
The theme adopted for the Tiger Translate arts exhibition is “Change”. The idea is to present the artist’s interpretation of ongoing evolution of the world around us.
The Danish and Asian artists have been collaborating, and the past two days have been nothing short of interesting, even for those in our group who knew diddly-squat about art.
Song Yang, a comic artist from Beijing has been collaborating with Frederick “Clean” Dahl, a professional graffiti artist from Denmark. Instead of papers or brick walls, the duo was given a red rubbish bin to draw on.
Although they had only just met two days ago for the first time, the chemistry between the two is fantastic.
Song Yang started out sketching some very Chinese wushu comic book-style clouds and pagodas, and Frederick filled in the blanks with his own brand of Western-style graffiti.
Song Yang is also working alongside illustrators Miss Lotion from Denmark, Hrvrk from Denmark and Antz from Singapore on the 8-metre-long “Pass It On” wall.
The arts exhibition tomorrow isn’t just gonna be limited to those who knows how to use the paint brush. Rom Khampanya, an architecture student from Thailand came up with a multimedia art piece so incredibly unique that very few people seen it before.
To illustrate his interpretation of the theme “Change”, Rom created a series of “Before” and “After” pictures of different cities around the world.
This is the aerial shot of the Victory Monument in Bangkok as it is today.
This is what Rom thinks it would look like in the future – global warming causing the fall of civilization, trees growing out of buildings, massive flooding on the streets and the aerial shot of the Victory Monument looking as if it is crying.
What makes Rom’s artwork so special is that he’s not just gonna simply present them as a series of photos. That’d be boring.
Instead, he lets his audience holds a Nintendo Wii remote so that when they wave the remote over the “before” picture like a brush, it reveals the “after” shot stroke by stroke.
Le Fix is a group of Danish artists working together to build a physical art piece. At first I was wondering why they come to a studio carrying a pile of junk.
Then I was wondering how come they are building a house in the middle of the studio. Guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out that they’re trying to show us.
Hopefully it’s not a sign that they plan on living inside the studio.
The Mongolian artists are always the ones creating the most hype at Tiger Translate events, and it’s no exception for Copenhagen.
Sidsel Tuxen from Denmark and Bekheedei Bilguudei from Mongolia are both computer graphic artists who are collaborating to create an animated sand clock, using alphabets from various languages around the world as sand.
But the East-meets-West collaboration I am most looking forward this Tiger Translate is the one between Mongolian painter Ulziibadrakh Sonomtseveen and Danish photographer Liv Carlé Mortensen. And let me tell you why.
Ulzii speaks very limited English so the two are unable to communicate at length. But according to Liv, “you don’t need to speak the same language to communicate in art.”
On the first day of them meeting, the two of them showed each other their portfolio. Ulzii’s paintings are mostly mild but creative. But Liv’s portfolio on the other hand can only be described as intense and controversial.
One of the pictures she took was of her and her old mother standing in front of a car – fully naked.
Coming from a conservative Mongolian background, Ulzii was obviously shocked. But then, she popped him the question: Can she photograph him, nude?
He agreed.
The next day, the Danish photographer took the Mongolian painter to her church, met her priest and she photographed the both of them, lying in the middle of the graveyard – fully naked.
This East-meets-West thing is getting interesting. And I can only imagine what the end result of their finishing piece would look like tomorrow.
Would you ever pose nude in the name of art?
AD: Something big is happening this 25th September.
As the world celebrates the 250th birthday of a legendary black beer, one remarkable international act shall descend upon Sunway Lagoon to Let’s Get It Started. Tickets to the event are so exclusive that you might even wonder, Where is the Love? Well, stayed tuned ‘cos one way you gotta-get-get those tix, is through kennysia.com.
I got a feeling, that the night’s gonna be a good night. And no-no-no-no-baby-no-no-no-no My Humps don’t lie.
Are you going?