Running at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) until the middle of next month, “Thai Charisma: Heritage + Creative Power” is a juxtaposition of museum-quality artefacts and contemporary works of art — the very old with the very new — which results in an experience that’s sometimes so overwhelming that it’s difficult to digest or even describe.
Pannapan’s mixed media mural at the ‘Thai Charisma’ exhibition.
Decorated with simple patterns drawn in red paint, Ban Chiang pottery, which could well be more than 2,000 years old, sits in a glass display case right next to a painting by Udomsak Krisanamis executed on a “canvas” made from bubble wrap. The rough, abstract lines on the latter remind you of the red lines on the ancient earthenware.
In another room at the BACC there’s a 12th-century Buddha stone image sheltered in the time-honoured way by the hood of a mythological naga’s head; in the room right next to it is a row of modern sculptures by Kamin Lertchaiprasert. The postures of these figures may resemble traditional depictions of the Buddha when seen from afar, but they were actually modelled on ordinary people in various stages of life.
This is a group exhibition by 18 artists who drew inspiration for their work from some 30 objects of religious or historic significance in the safekeeping of the Fine Arts Department. The concept for the project first occurred to the guest curator for this exhibition, Prof Apinan Poshyananda, more than 20 years ago and he’s been ruminating on it ever since. (Dr Apinan is permanent secretary of the Ministry of Culture which oversees the Fine Arts Department).
The result is a clash between, and a blending of, the old and the new; work by artisans from yesteryear whose identities were not recorded shares a space with work by established contemporary artists, resulting in a generally fluid transition despite the many centuries which separate some of the pieces.
Dr Apinan got the ball rolling by inviting the commissioned artists to a Fine Arts Department storage facility in Tambon Klong Ha, Pathum Thani, which houses approximately 77,000 heritage objects.
“There’s a great number of beautiful Buddha images in this storeroom which have never been exhibited before,” Dr Apinan reasoned. “Seeing them, I felt so excited and thought it was such a shame [that more people didn’t have the chance to view them]. Then I started wondering who had created these works, what were their original purpose was and how their meanings might have changed over the years.”
Dr Apinan has curated a few similar projects in years past, including an exhibition by the Asia Society in New York back in 1996 when he invited Asian artists to create new works in reaction to a collection of old sculptures, scrolls and ceramics. There was also an exhibition hosted by the Singapore Art Museum two years ago where he exhibited the work of a group of contemporary Thai artists alongside a selection of historic artefacts.
“Whether it’s an Avalokitesvara Bodhisattra image or Ban Chiang earthenware, I do think there can be a seamless transition from anonymous artisans to contemporary artists. Just taking a statue of the Buddha in the standing posture from the stack where it’s been stored away for years and setting it upright again could, I think, be described as an artistic process.”
Viewed from a distance, Panya Vijinthanasarn’s mixed-media installation Unhappy looks uncharacteristically radical because it comprises four car bonnets mounted on a wall. But when you move closer and see what Panya has done, his technique is immediately reminiscent of a method of engraving long favoured by traditional Thai artisans. He first painted the sheets of metal with a layer of gold paint, overpainted them in black and then used a special tool to remove some of this black paint to “reveal” a group of intricately rendered human figures underneath.
Nearby stands a gilded bronze Avalokitesvara Bodhisattra statue from the 9th or 10th century which has been positioned next a monitor screening artist Sakarin Krue-on’s take on this sacred artefact. His simple yet straightforward piece, entitled The Journey Of Object No. 99/1817/2532, is a short documentary recording the journey this ancient image recently made from its splendid isolation in the storage warehouse in Pathum Thani all the way to the BACC in central Bangkok.
In many more works displayed throughout the art centre’s eighth floor, a dialogue is clearly perceptible between recently created works of art and, displayed side by side, the artefacts which inspired them. Rirkrit Tiravanija’s animated feature (7 hours in length) shows white lines being drawn on a black background, imitating traditional samut Thai dam, a handmade paper created from the fibre of the khoi bush and then blackened by charcoal from the sanoh khang khok tree. The black sheets of paper were then written or drawn on with a pastel-like white pencil which, for a more long-lasting impression, was often overwritten using a yellow ink made from gamboge tree resin. This very early form of paper was used for doing the preliminary sketch of a mural later painted on a wall at Wat Phra Kaew, a reproduction of which is on display at the BACC exhibition.
Yuree Kansaku’s acrylic-on-canvas Holy Cow The Giver And A Beggar Pig is a manga take on a 20th-century series of painted textile images depicting scenes from the Vessantara Jataka, a parable about one of the Buddha’s past lives before he attained enlightenment.
In a similar vein, a piece of embroidery work by Jakkai Siributr echoes the style of a much older embroidered textile depicting an episode from the Ramayana epic.
“This exhibition is a combination whose outcome we could never have predicted. And this is what makes it so very exciting,” Dr Apinan enthused. “And it’s not just artefacts and artworks made to respond to them. There are also murals painted by two female artists, Bussaraporn Thongchai and Pannapan Yodmanee, especially for this exhibition. In the old days, material success had nothing to do with this kind of art. Anonymous artisans, who were simply motivated by faith, would do paintings on temple walls and if the murals got damaged at a later stage they would do them all over again. Likewise, the murals done for this exhibition are going to be painted over once the show is finished.”
Similar to Bussaraporn and Pannapan’s wall paintings, which were inspired by traditional mural depictions of heaven and hell, a series of sculptures by Prasert Yodkaew called Angel were very much inspired by Buddhist beliefs and specifically by Chak Phra, a ritual in which a revered Buddha statue is taken from the local temple, placed on a raft (if the temple is near a body of water) or carnival-type float and towed around by devout residents to mark the end of Buddhist Lent and celebrate the Buddha’s return to this world after spending the monsoon season preaching to his mother in heaven. This annual ceremony captured Prasert’s imagination and he envisioned the idea of sculpting a group of angels who follow the Lord Buddha when he descends from heaven, but then fail to make the return journey.
The BACC show also includes a collection of drawings by the late Thawan Duchanee which have never before been put on public display. They have become, quite coincidentally, a tribute to the memory of this highly respected national artist who passed away just a few days after the exhibition opened.
“The inspiration for Thawan’s works came from many different sources, from local art, from Lanna, Tibet and Myanmar,” Dr Apinan explained. “But what he always refers back to is the story of Tribhumikatha [the idea of the existence of three separate worlds that is a central tenet of Buddhist cosmology].”
“Each artist interpreted and responded to what he or she saw,” Apinan noted. “It was a very risky undertaking organising this exhibition because we are talking about the safety, the transportation of artefacts, some of which are 2,000 years old, and we didn’t even know how the contemporary works were going to turn out. This was a cause of great excitement for all involved.”
“Thai Charisma: Heritage + Creative Power” continues at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Rama I Road until Nov 18.
A selection of Buddha images from the Fine Arts Department collection.
