Project 189 Bangkok is very pleased to announce the autumn solo exhibition "Nocturne" by Nana Chen.

ARTIST STATEMENT
"Nocturne" is a portrait of Bangkok’s Chinatown, which Chen explores at night over the course of May and June 2016 as artist-in-residence at Project 189. Her photographs are haunted by isolation, loneliness, decay and death. A temple morphs into the face of a lion; an artificial streak of light seems to point to an eroded building; and a display case containing dried leaves and stuffed tarantulas suggest an alchemist lives nearby. A study of still lives that at once dissects the human condition and life’s fading elegance.

ABOUT
Taipei-born photographer Nana Chen has been published in The Observer, Marie Claire, D-la Repubblica, AFP, SCMP and many other international publications. Chen currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City after a nomadic life in Buenos Aires, Santiago, Atlanta, Copenhagen, Bangkok and other places. Her recent projects include "Chungking Mansions: the last ghetto in Hong Kong" and a portrait series on Vietnam's billionaire women. Her photographic themes include displacement, globalisation and sub-cultures. A classically trained violinist, Nana's passions include architecture, interiors and non-popular music. She divides her time between Vietnam, Thailand and Europe.

PROJECT 189 BANGKOK
The project is privately funded and collaboratively curated. The three-story shophouse stands alongside spice warehouses, multi-generational family homes, workshops, laboratories, galleries, restaurants, and more on Soi Nana, a neighborhood unlike any other in Southeast Asia. The space has been active since September 2015, hosting selected artists and local guests of the residency’s founder, Ekua Yankah. Ekua fell in love with the shophouse one night in January 2014 when she glimpsed the then-abandoned unit from a neighbor’s rooftop. The painstaking eighteen-month renovation of Project 189 was a collaborative effort between the designers/neighbours Jim Brewer, Anikamon Amphansook and Ekua Yankah. Shophouse 189 was renovated to preserve the feel of the mottled and crumbling structure. The result is in an open and living art space—much like the converted bunkers in the founder’s hometown of Berlin (Germany). The concept behind the residency is simple: artists and guests are invited to use the shophouse as their studio and home, which is outfitted with basic but comfortable living arrangements on the second floor. Residents are welcomed to embrace the quirks and quintessence of both the building and the neighborhood in their creative processes.

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