Artist Pisitakun Kuantalaeng, 28, was once a Yellow Shirt. In less than a decade, Pisitakun went from a fervent supporter of anti-Thaksin politics and airport seizures to an artist who took to the streets after the junta seized power last May.
The Unfinished History series, part of the 'Concept Context Contestation: Art And The Collective In Southeast Asia' at BACC.
Soldiers were everywhere on that day to curb anti-coup protesters. But nobody bothered Pisitakun, armed only with his ballpoint pen.
The finished sketches, titled "Space Of Happiness", were shown last year as part of "The Mirror And Monitor Of Democracy In Asia" exhibition, at Gwangju Museum of Art in South Korea. The drawings are powerful and simple; containing no soldiers, the artist's fabricated innocence is poignant and sad. Just as it influenced people's ideas of how a society should work, the deadly crackdown on the Red Shirts in May 2010 permanently shaped Pisitakun as a member of society, a critical thinker and an artist.
Reflecting on his work, from its early days to the present, his artistic journey to becoming one of Thailand's emerging contemporary artists is one worthy of attention.
We met and talked many times over cold beers. There are similarities between his artwork and what he's like drunk and dancing: forthright, courageous, humorous in a way Thais call guan teen — playfully irritable and provocative.
Take his latest project, "Master/Bate", initially released on a Facebook event page that will later be published as a book. Since Dec 21, Pisitakun has been uploading made-up constitution-like principles imposed on himself and his art exhibition, as well as on the art industry in general, from galleries and curators to viewers.
"The exhibition 'Master/Bate' of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2550 has established a group of artists in the Master/Bate exhibition to be the drafting committee of Master/Bate," reads one part of the preamble. "This new edition is to be the guideline in governing the art industry, preventing any group of people or artists from expressing opinions ... the draft of this new edition of Master/Bate aims to achieve the author's and his own people's purposes to maintain the Master/Bate exhibition and national security."
Anticipating a new charter by the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) this year, Pisitakun's fictional principles and mischievous style hold an incredible gravity, relevant to Thailand's current political situation.
Chapter Two, entitled "Personal", includes the following sections:
A piece from 'Drift', at G23 Gallery, Srinakharinwirot University Prasarnmit.
"Pisitakun Kuantalaeng is a great and famous artist, respected by people in the art industry. No one shall violate, accuse or sue him."
"Pisitakun Kuantalaeng is the leader of the art industry."
"Pisitakun Kuantalaeng has the status of a great artist. He can tell whether an artist is famous or not. He can give awards to artists."
"Pisitakun Kuantalaeng can confer titles to his artists or his people for power in taking care of the art industry, and can appoint advisers and other positions according to the Master/Bate exhibition."
Pisitakun was struck by how often Thailand has undergone constitutional change — whether they be adjustments or overhauls resulting from coups — since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932. He likened this set of written principles to the art world, which he believes is also controlled by a system, despite the fact that art is fundamentally about total freedom.
Seeing what happened to the Dao Din group (five university students who wore black T-shirts which together read: "No to the coup d'etat") and those who flashed the three-finger salute, Pisitakun figured if the coup-makers could come up with rules to suit themselves, then he could too.
"Now I have power," says Pisitakun. "I have taken the real one, the 2007 Charter, and reconstructed it, I have taken all the points about freedom out and everything is for my own good.
"This is masturbation because it's all about yourself, what you want, what you imagine yourself."
Despite studying art at Thaivichitsilp Technological College and earning a bachelor's degree in sculpture from the Department of Fine Arts at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Pisitakun says his artistic career began after he finished school.
In his first year at Thaivichitsilp Technological College he majored in design, but changed to fine art when he discovered painting was something he could "spend the longest time with".
Still, Pisitakun says he learned almost nothing from university. Studying fine art was just a question of "what art is", he said. When he experimented with his work, it was always within the bounds of questions posed by professors. His art never had the freedom to travel beyond the bounds of university premises, to relate and interact with the real world.
"When I graduated I didn't know what to do," says Pisitakun. "I had art, I had ideas about art, but I didn't know who I was communicating with. I didn't believe the people I wanted to talk to were the art people. I realised that society was bigger than that and I didn't have the knowledge to find ways to deal with them, to create an impact. I only had the skills."
His early works reflect that. It was mostly a conversation with himself, experimentation rather than attempting to relate to the world. His thesis project, which was later part of an exhibition at now-defunct Nospace Gallery, was a series of installations reconstructing his childhood home and his then-current one. His first solo show "Termite", also at Nospace, was a collection of wooden sculptures he'd created at university.
After graduation, he made his first attempt at connecting his art and his audience, in a handmade booklet project, Sum-Mye. The title is southern Thai dialect, roughly translated as "Once More?". He drew small characters or icons and repeated them again and again, all over the pages, exploring the effect of reproduction by hand. The concept itself was weak and vague, but Pisitakun succeeded in connecting with his audience, who participated by sending their own work, interpreting and responding to his idea.
His following project, Useless Art-Exhibition: Ratchaburi Journey, explored the concept of art and further experimented with audience participation, an element that has persisted in most of his later work. It started with a question his mother asked him — what practical thing could he actually do after all that he'd learned? He ended up making a series of chinaware in unusable shapes, which he put on sale. The audience couldn't choose a piece until after they paid, then they would draw lots.
"It's not like this in the Western world," says Pisitakun. "There, art has a place and a role. Here, art is always about its practicality. It's so paradoxical that my mum should ask me that because the art she appreciates is stuff like Chalermchai Kositpipat's, which is all about traditional aesthetics."
Since graduation, Pisitakun has struggled with money. As a full-time artist, he occasionally takes on freelance commercial design and illustration jobs. His 2012 project, We Need To Talk About Money, further questioned the idea of art and its value. The project was simple: he drew banknotes — 20, 100, 500 or 1,000 baht — and sold them for their actual monetary value.
Like "Master/Bate", his platform was solely online. Customers could set an appointment and he would show up and draw money there. Once, he needed 6,000 baht for rent. So he drew 6,000 baht notes, which a client actually bought, relieving him of that month's financial debt. The project was the beginning of a further development into the group project "Money Faketory", which featured in Taipei's Kuandu Biennale last year and is currently part of the "[-]1: 'The Great Artist Of Tomorrow Will Go Underground' — Marcel Duchamp" exhibition, at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.
"I just thought to myself, 'Why do I have no money?'," says Pisitakun. "There must be something wrong that every time I talk about money, there's always some sort of complication. There's high art and low art, and we never know the real value of each piece. So I just decided to do some work that could really be measured, a 1,000 baht note is always going to worth 1,000 baht." Since the deadly 2010 crackdown, his work has shifted toward social and political commentary. If someone was to label him as a Red Shirt, Pisitakun says, he honestly couldn't care less.
"Thailand has gone way beyond the concept of a colour-coded rift," says Pisitakun. "Killing people wasn't a right and fair thing to do. It was a turning point in my life when I started to question everything: who was actually behind those killings and why the Yellow and Red Shirts weren't treated with the same justice."
In the 2011 exhibition "Drift", at G23 Gallery at Srinakharinwirot University Prasarnmit, Pisitakun reproduced photos from newspapers, magazines and those shared on Facebook. Each was drawn in a different style, as though each was being told by different people with different perspectives. Pisitakun later compiled the series into a cartoon-like booklet, leaving speech bubbles empty, allowing readers to fill in the blanks.
"At that time, there was a lot of news going on about the Yellow and Red Shirts," says Pisitakun. "The exact same photo was accompanied with completely different stories, and that was a serious problem. You relied on no evidence, you just made it to be how you wanted it to be."
"Nosychio News", an exhibition at Osage gallery in Hong Kong, was a continuation of that. Pisitakun set his exhibition space as an office reception area. On a rack were copies of a hand-drawn newspaper. Some pages were left blank, others consisted of the same photo in every frame, sometimes zoomed in on various parts, forcing readers to approach the story with a biased or limited perspective.
The years 2013 and 2014 were quite prolific for Pisitakun. The Unfinished History, a project in which Pisitakun reproduced a series of photos of important historical figures at the height of their power, coupled with those of them near death, featured in "Concept Context Contestation: Art And The Collective in Southeast Asia" exhibition, at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. In 2014, he showcased at WTF gallery twice — a solo show "ZZ Zet Zero", which was a collection of work created during the period in which Yingluck's government attempted to pass the Amnesty Bill, and a group show "Conflicted Visions".
But one of the biggest turning points in his career took place in 2012, when Pisitakun presented his interactive artwork to a participatory audience. The work greatly offended many in attendance. He received threatening phone calls — artists were going to beat him up — and word about what he did spread. The situation worsened to such a degree that he left Thailand, spending months in Indonesia and Japan.
"I believed I was becoming a recognised artist before that event," says Pisitakun. "I used to believe that art has the power to say what others cannot. After that, the connection was gone — my contract with a gallery was terminated; my show which was going to go abroad was cancelled."
"It made me realise art is all about connection, and people are ready to beat you to the ground if you don't believe what they believe."
Like his personality, Pisitakun's body of work is known in a way Thais call guan teen — playfully irritable and provocative.
A piece from the exhibition 'ZZ - Zet Zero'.
