Quiet roars in the lion city

Quiet roars in the lion city

From animated sex dolls to found-object installations, Thai artists make their mark at the Singapore Biennale

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Quiet roars in the lion city

Among the artists from Southeast Asia and beyond featured at this year's Singapore Biennale _ and I concede there may be some bias in my saying so _ those from Thailand, albeit only a handful, made quite an impact.

Prateep Suthathongthai’s Stillness Of Reflection features photographs printed on tiles.

With "If The World Changed" as the theme for this year, all the works displayed at various venues around the Bras Basah and Bugis Street areas address the idea of change, how we look at our past and present and anticipate the future.

Unity, though currently a rare commodity at home, can be found in the theme of these artworks. There are seven in all _ six solo pieces and one collaborative project, and though done with different forms and techniques, all in the oeuvre play with various aspects of our perception, whether it's the problematic conception of the world, the reconstruction of fact, the artistic value of everyday objects, the role and purpose of art, or the deconstruction of objects which produce a new set of meanings.

Boonsri Tangtrongsin's hand-drawn animation, Superbarbara Saving The World, is possibly the highlight of the lot, drawing laughter from the audience and at the same time provoking them to think about various issues in society.

Superbarbara is an inflatable sex doll, and through 11 short episodes her role as heroine and victim are blurred as a flock of crows constantly take advantage of her.

"The Superbarbara project started from the idea of seeing and understanding the world today," said Boonsri. "There are many problems happening continuously, but they have never been solved."

One episode shows Superbarbara inflating herself just so that every part of her body will be taken away by the crows and used for their own good, like walking with her limbs and flying with her hands as wings. Another episode shows the crows in a factory repeatedly pecking and destroying the recently inflated sex dolls on the conveyor line. The cycle never stops, such incidents happen repeatedly in almost every episode.

Miniscule images are embedded in raisin beads as part of Nipan Oranniwesna’s mixed-media installation Hope Brings Us Here .

"Boonsri interprets tragedy in a hilarious way," said Thai curator Ark Fongsmut. "This is a very Thai characteristic. In the face of problems, most Thai people don't cry. We laugh in tears."

The fact that she used a sex doll as a heroine in the first place already plays with our stereotypical perception of each character in society, and the work stresses the complex world today where there's really no boundary between good and bad.

"The situations presented in this work simulate the current incidences in society which projects a discouraging prophecy," Boonsri added. "What has already occurred can't be stopped, but will loop in a seemingly endless circle."

In a more sombre manner, Nipan Oranniwesna's mixed-media installation, Hope Brings Us Here, talks about our perception of fact and fiction. Within miniscule resin beads scattered across the wooden floor are embedded almost indistinguishable photographs of major incidents in Thai history such as Oct 14, 1973 and Oct 6, 1976, and Black May in 1992, as well as images of the Thai community in Singapore's Golden Mile Complex.

"It's a site-specific installation," explained Nipan. "The main concept is to question the space and memory of an individual life in a nation and also about the politics of identity, nationalism and globalisation."

Looking at such tiny images and through the resin result in a rather distorted view and that's probably the artist's approach to the reconstruction of fact and historical memory.

There's also a video component at the end of the room, while one screen shows the developed landscapes of Singapore, the other shows those of Isan, an impoverished region which Nipan has close ties to.

Nopchai Ungkavatanapong’s I Have Seen A Sweeter Sky .

"The left screen is the landscapes in front of the Golden Mile Complex during the time when smoke was blown from forest fires in Indonesia," Nipan explained. "For me, the dense smoke was a metaphor for visitors from other lands, like a lot of Thai workers who came here."

The third and last part of the installation is a small star-shaped sculpture.

"It's made of coins of two currencies [Thai and Singaporean] melted together," explained Nipan. "Then made into the shape of a star. The symbol of a star is used in many cases. To me, it's a monument to the Thai workers here who are continually building their identity."

Like Nipan's miniscule photographs under raisin beads, Prateep Suthathongthai's collage of photographs on tiles is also about the distorted, or even deceptive, view we have of the world.

Titled Stillness Of Reflection, these photographs on the four arched walls in the courtyard of the Singapore Art Museum are actually photographs of the courtyard itself, but arranged in a distorted collage-like manner. While on one hand it speaks of the complexities of photographic dimension and distance, on the other hand it's also the artist's way of addressing the loss of truth and the emergence of new realities in a rapidly changing world.

Meanwhile, Krit Ngamsom's and Nopchai Ungkavatanapong's "objet trouve" installations are about the deconstruction of discarded objects put together to create new set of meanings. Titled Light Of Nature, Krit turned lamp posts at the garden of the National Library into aquariums for fish as a conceptual artwork on how nature can exist even in the midst of bustling city life.

Nopchai Ungkavatanapong's I Have Seen A Sweeter Sky is a combination of discarded objects like an old bed and fan frame, wooden ladder, neon transformers and various electrical accessories in a chandelier-like fashion at the atrium of Peranakan Museum. Not only does it show how artistic arrangement can produce aesthetically but also how it can conjure totally new sets of meanings.

Other pieces of work worth seeing include Dusadee Huntrakul's hand-written transcription of Aihwa Ong's account of Cambodian immigration to the West, Buddha Is Hiding. This laborious and exact reproduction by hand (63 pages in all) is Dusadee's strategy of not only highlighting the problematic issues of citizenship but also about the presentation of anthropological findings as subject matter in contemporary art.

While Dusadee's focus is using subjects from other fields as a work of art, a collaborative project, Satanni, by a group of artists pushes the limit and role of art by also bringing in creators from other fields.

It is comprised of works by product designer Anon Pairot, artist Kamin Lertchaiprasert, architect Patama Roonrakwit, researcher Samart Suwannarat and writer and editor Zcongklod Bangyikhan. Responding to the biennale's theme and how art might turn out to be in the future, Thai curator Angkrit Ajchariyasophon said that this project is not just about artists but also people in other fields gathering in an art space.

"Satanni is a counterpoint to the kind of art that biennale are known to present, and Satanni questions art in the institution," explained Angkrit. "We have to open up to a wider perspective of art-making and cultural production, seen not just from the perspective of artists and fine art practitioners. A museum should not be just a place to display precious objects. It will be more progressive as a learning centre. It should be a space that activates people, and not a passive site where people just come to look at what has been collected."

Collaborative project Satanni by a group of Thai artists.

Sex doll Superbarbara in one of Boonsri Tangtrongsin’s 11 episodes of hand-drawn animation.

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