Have you ever looked into an egg and had the egg look back into you?
This is one of Paisal Theerapongvisanuporn's surreal and disturbing images that can be seen at Kathmandu Photo Gallery's "The Nightmare Remains" exhibition from Saturday.
The show reflects Thai photography from the late 1980s as represented by Paisal, an artist whose work predates contemporary and digital techniques.
Paisal turned his attention to creative photography between 1977 and 1997, transforming mundane objects into a symbolic language to vent his anxieties about Thai society at that time.
Dolls were stuffed into cans and jars to speak of child prostitution. A golf ball painted in the colours of the national flag is about to be hit into space, from a course covered with cash. Spray-painted cartons of eggs in different colours, some with misshapen embryos or eyeballs inside their fragile shells, comment on the terrifying insubstantiality of a world increasingly reliant on technology.
Paisal's images tackle gargantuan problems of national and transnational corporate usurpation of natural resources, greed, corruption, exploitation and oppression. These artworks, some from almost 30 years ago, are as pertinent as ever.
"The Nightmare Remains" will be on display at Kathmandu Photo Gallery from Saturday until Sept 29. The opening party is on Saturday at 6.30pm. The gallery is located on Pan Road (near the Indian Temple), Silom, and opens Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. Call 02-234-6700.
