When Covid-19 hit the world, most everyone was unprepared for the new way of living it would bring. The lockdowns and new restrictions were something that most people had never experienced before. Along with the new norm for living came a plethora of emotions from fear and anxiety to loneliness and depression.
How we dealt with these feelings was also unchartered territory for most of us and often left us using our own creative ideas to find hope as well as some sort of relative normalcy in our day to day lives. Onicha Wanitchakorn, an incredibly talented Thai designer who often goes by the name Eve, was experiencing the same challenges but with the help of a good friend, a lot of talent and the desire to help others, she set out to accomplish something unprecedented.
Eve was pursuing her Masters Degree in Graphic Design and Digital Media at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where she met Blu who was studying in the same program. Since both of them were originally from Bangkok, Thailand and pursuing the same degree, it was a recipe for an instant friendship that would end up leading to exciting things. Eve’s amazing abilities as an artist were about to reach a whole new level.
Both Eve and her new found friend wanted to find a way to help others, as well as convey their own feelings about what they were emotionally going through during these challenging times. They realized that by injecting their feelings into their art, that they could truly convey to others what their day to day life was like and which emotions were most common in their trek.
At first, they planned to use printed media like posters and newspapers to introduce others to their style of art but due to the restrictions in place, they quickly realized that their most promising path would be through online media. That is where the idea for Coexperiments.com was born. By combining a passion for art and design with the desire to help other people see that they were not alone, Eve and Blu were able to create an online place for people to feel and experience emotion in art.
Starting out however was a bit of a challenge. Between the two Thai designers, they were able to muster together a decent amount of art supplies to work with but collaborating remotely along with difficult schedules didn’t give them the structure they were seeking to see their ideas come to fruition. That is when Eve Wanitchakorn realized that the only way to accomplish this was for both of them to meet face to face to let their creative juices flow. This is where they were able to get to the core of what they wanted Coexperiments.com to be about and narrow down which feelings impacted them the most after the Covid-19 lockdown.
After really taking the time to talk with one another on a day to day basis about their inner perceptions, they were able to drill down to three emotional topics that they struggled with the most. These were Anxiety, Isolation and Losing Track of Time.
By focusing on these three core emotions, they went to work creating art that truly expressed their inner perception of what was happening around them. With Eve being a strong improviser and Blu having strong planning skills, the Thai born designers were the perfect team for putting together a portfolio of designs that envelop both talent and emotion. The project was a gateway into helping the girls understand more about themselves as well as providing mental therapy for their souls. Each one of them were able to provide some perspective into their journey that shows a little more about who they truly are.
Eve, with her talented background and education, was able to bring an overabundance of great ideas to the table for the project by making art and raw emotion combine on a level rarely seen.
In their art experiment, Anxiety is conveyed by using different types of a liquid as a medium to express the raw feeling. The movement of the ink creates a sense of fear, spreading itself and haunting people which was similar to how many people felt during the spread of Covid-19.
Isolation and not being able to see friends and family was an emotion that was especially difficult to deal with. The feeling of being disconnected was challenging and the art that was created portrayed just that. Eve came up with a creative idea of using negative space in her work to display the feelings of being distant, constrained and isolated from others. They also used nostalgic photography as a way to express how much they wanted to see their loved ones again.
Losing Track of Time was another big issue that they struggled with. Being isolated during the quarantine had also distorted the girl’s sense of time. The way that they were able to articulate this sense around them was by showing how time started to drift aimlessly through their art. Eve felt as though she was often confused and lost in a different dimension of time and needed to convey that.
Blu stated “I am always worried about the outcomes and perfection. I am always afraid to fail but Eve taught me to focus on what we have accomplished so far and just enjoy the journey.”
Eve gave a really insightful perspective on herself and the project as well.
“I am not a good planner, especially with small details. I prefer to let things go with the flow and just let whatever happens, happen. I just have fun with it and have learned that in this situation, we need people around us who are good at planning and preparing to keep us on track which will help us reach our goal faster.”
They both gained knowledge about who they truly are as well as expanded in their realization of what art is to them. Eve stated “To us, art and self-observation are a form of self care. This project not only helped us to understand ourselves better but also stimulated our creative minds while relieving mental strain.”
Eve’s incredible talent and ability to feel emotion in art, along with her friend’s creativity, can be seen by visiting their website project at coexperiments.com. There you will be able to study each unique design and feel for yourself the emotion that is connected. In this way, it will be possible to understand more about the feelings portrayed and how these emotions were experienced by so many others during the long battle with Covid-19.