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Thailand

Thailand © Foto: Haupt and Binder, Universes in Universe

Thailand

51st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia

12 June - 6 November 2005

Title: Reverie and Phantasm in the Epoch of Global Trauma

Artists: Montien Boonma, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

Commissioner: Apinan Poshyananda

Curators: Sutee Kunavichayanont, Luckana Kunavichayanont, Panya Vijinthanasarn

Venue: Cloister of the Convent of San Francesco della Vigna, Castello

San Francesco della Vigna. Cloister of the Convent, the venue of the national Pavilion of Thailand
© Photos: Haupt and Binder, Universes in Universe

Those Dying Wishing to Stay, Those Living Preparing to Leave

Curatorial text

The Vulnerable World

The cycle of birth, life and death is anything but a common matter. Loss and tragedy are indispensable parts of human history. With the high communication technology of this globalised age, we can easily share the same destiny. That includes the threat of local and international terrorism, forest and environmental destruction, food and water shortages, unequal access to modern medicines and medications, and especially the recent unprecedented natural disaster in Asian countries that resulted in the loss of over 200,000 lives.

The beginning of the twenty-first century marks a time when Thai people and their friends around the globe are highly vulnerable and discouraged. The world is now searching for alternative paths for future survival, valid meanings of happiness as well as mental and physical security.

Religion, art and cultural activities have become other answers for a meaningful life. Some contemporary art works have helped treat and heal the creator’s mental and physical illness, such as those of Montien Boonma and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook.

Montien Boonma

Art for Mental Strength

Montien Boonma (1953 – 2000 Bangkok) is known for works that successfully blend local and international contemporary art expressions to reflect his exploration of Buddhist philosophy and indigenous Thai wisdom. His large-scale sculptures and installations invoke all human senses. They are not only for the eyes, but also the nose, ears and hands. Viewers are invited to step or push into his works to contemplate and experience them with all the senses. The inter-relationship of the works and the viewer is a crucial part of understanding the artist’s projects. His later works consist mainly of Thai herbal pigments traditionally used for medicines.

Boonma’s works served as a bridge for the artist’s spiritual concentration and mental cure while his wife was suffering from breast cancer. Boonma then quite unexpectedly suffered the same disease and eventually died.

Although it is clear that Boonma sought self-detachment through his works, or ‘death before dying’, they are also a testimonial to his wish to preserve the life of his loved ones and his own.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

Making Contact

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (* 1957 Trad, Thailand) has been highly acclaimed for her contemporary art works and writings. Her earlier works are steeped in melancholy and pain caused by irreplaceable loss, solitude and a yearning for the past. They mainly stage the condition between life and death presented in poetic mode combining visual movement, ambient sound and the recital of old verses.

From 1998, Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video works started to challenge the ethics and tolerance of her viewers. In one of her video installations, Reading for Corpses, the artist is seen seated in a hospital room, reading beside a group of corpses. She was softly reciting excerpts from ‘Inao’, a well-known traditional Thai poem. The work implies the artist’s attempt to communicate with the dead. The recital is their dialogue. The act of reading for others suggests one’s giving of time, merit and an intimate relationship like that of a young person taking care of his or her ill elderly relatives.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: Conversation, 2005. Projection in the cloister of the monastery of San Francesco della Vigna, whose floor is made up of tomb slabs.
© Photo: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: Conversation, 2005
© Still: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. Repro: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: This is our Creations, 2005. Projection in the cloister of the monastery, whose floor is made up of tomb slabs.
© Photo: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: This is our Creations, 2005. Video, 7:40 min. The artist is lying between six corpses and talking to the dead.
© Photo: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: This is our Creations, 2005. Video, 7:40 min. The artist is lying between six corpses and talking to the dead.
© Photo: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: The Class, 2005. Video, 16:20. As a teacher, the artist writes "DEATH" on the blackboard and explains its meaning to the six dead bodies.
© Still: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. Repro: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
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Those Dying Wishing to Stay, Those Living Preparing to Leave

Although Boonma’s works deal mainly with the delicacy of life, we can still experience his effort to control such fragility; the artist’s desire to remain in this wonderful world, even for just a few more moments. The selection of Boonma’s works in this exhibition reflects art as a process for mental and physical treatment. Meanwhile, Rasdjarmrearnsook has involved herself in the subjects of loss, melancholy and death, as if she is living with death in every breath. To her the comfort of mind seems to lie in the breathless air. Perhaps one’s mind has already been buried alive without the body dying. It may also be the artist's hope that an encounter between the living and the dead may pave the way to the artist’s personal understanding of the relationship between life and death.

(© Text by the curators, 2005)


Organizer:

Office of Contemporary Art and Culture
Ministry of Culture
Bangkok, Thailand


From press information.
© Photos: Haupt and Binder, Universes in Universe


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