Installing discomfort at the end of the world

Installing discomfort at the end of the world

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

H Project Space presents ''A Room At The End Of The World'', an installation by Amornthep Jaidee, an emergent artist based in Thailand and Canada.

Probing discomforting but revelatory ideas about sexuality, desire and identity, the artist has re-created H Project Space as a surreal bedroom where the weird juxtaposition of found objects antagonises the serenity and grandeur of this colonial-style room.

New generations of artists continue to provide fresh voices for the critical theories of gender and sexuality that have emerged under the rubric of postmodernism and with queer theory.

Themes of a fragmented self, the politics of normative values, and the subversive potential of ambivalent knowledge receive renewed interest for ever-expanding contemporary contexts.

This exhibition confronts us with a recognition of the fraught terms by which we often understand private, personal experiences and our sense of self therein _ between seduction and repellence, desire and risk, and other confusions.

The title of this installation refers to Michael Cunningham's acclaimed novel from 1990, A Home At The End Of The World, which explored how a small group of individuals sought to re-imagine themselves and their identities outside conventional structures and away from the grand political frameworks of previous generations.

The title also refers to the architecture of H Project Space, a somewhat quaint symbol of history in the context of modern, metropolitan Bangkok.

Both references can be understood as ideals but may be mined for their failures: the former for revealing the ultimate power of convention and the latter as an outmoded gesture.

However, ''A Room At The End Of The World'' reconsiders their intrinsic ambitions to imagine a space where conventional understanding and hierarchies of difference are no longer possible.

A Room At The End Of The World will be on show atHProject Space from July 11 to Aug 18. The gallery is on Sathon Soi 12 and opens Wednesday to Monday from 10amto 6pm. Call 085-021-5508 or visit www.hgallerybkk.com.

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