Last month, on October 17, Thin Lei Win and Kelly Macnamara officially launched The Kite Tales website. On December 8, just under two months after the launch, The Kite Tales is hosting their first big exhibition.
“We have always planned to have an exhibition and the end of the year seems like a great time to hold it, because for many people it can be a time to reflect and take stock of the past as well as to look to the future”, Win explained.
Both Win and Macnamara are journalists, and together, they record and retell stories — or tales — of ordinary Myanmar people from across the country.
Although the website is young, it’s been a big hit with Myanmar and international audiences. People have likened it to the popular Facebook page Humans of New York, although each kite tale is much more in-depth than most found on HONY.
To collect these tales, the women travel all over Myanmar together, doing research into who they’d like to talk to, and sitting down with their subjects for at least an hour, and often longer.
“We have been really pleased with the enthusiastic response we have had to the website so far. We hope that people find it interesting and that it can act as a window into what life is like in another part of Myanmar, and for people who they may not necessarily come across otherwise”, Macnamara said with pride.
Whereas each tale on the Kite Tales site is a combination of text and photo, the exhibition will incorporate other forms of multimedia, including video and audio.
Macnamara explained, “Part of the motivation for the exhibition was to showcase different ways that we can tell stories about history and personal experience, so we want to have lots of video and pictures.”
The exhibition won’t have any entrance fees, but some of the photos will be auctioned off at the end. Because the project has mainly been funded by donations from kind individuals, the security of funds is a major requirement in ensuring the expansion and longevity of the project.
Approximately 20 stories will be on display at the installation, and it will be a mix of stories that are already on the site and newer ones that haven’t been released.
As one can imagine, choosing just 20 stories is a hard task. In fact, the team is still having “some last-minute debates” as to which ones to feature.
“We really want to show the fantastic diversity of Myanmar and to display it in a way that highlights all the benefits of that rich variety of perspectives, of cultures and languages.”
“There have been a few major themes that have emerged as we travelled around too and we wanted to explore those through these stories.”
Fans of Kite Tales can also get involved with the exhibition as part of a special installation called ‘What Do You Cherish?’. In an effort to “start a conversation about protecting cultural heritage”, Win and Macnamara asked some of their interviewees to choose an item that they valued and that they would like to preserve for future generations.
“The answers we have had already have been really fascinating and so varied — from an identity card, to a dress from childhood and a sacred dagger.”
Fans are encouraged to get in touch on Instagram or Facebook during the exhibition with stories about what they cherish by posting a picture of themselves with their cherished item — it can be anything — and an explanation as to why it is special to them, with the tag #thekitetales. If the team really likes it, it’ll be printed and added to the installation.
The exhibition will be held at Myanmar Deitta art gallery in Yangon and will run from December 8-18. You can find out more about the event and RSVP via the event’s Facebook page.
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