It is ill-fated irony that an art exhibition which is probably most relevant to the current political havoc is unable to be viewed because of that havoc itself.
The Election Of Hatred (2011), by Manit Sriwanichpoom. The photoraph is part of the exhibition ‘Concept Context Contestation: Art And The Collective In Southeast Asia’.
At the main gallery on the 8th floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, which has been closed since Monday due to the People's Democratic Reform Committee's convulsing protests, Yingluck Shinawatra's mouth was ripped off, her usually spotless face dotted with eerie marks. Next to her, Abhisit Vejjajiva's eyes were gouged out, though his smile remained bizarrely bright. Other politicians _ from all parties _ suffered a similarly violent fate. Lacerations, slashes, gashes, imaginary wounds inflicted with manifest hatred.
Hopefully you can soon see them for yourself. A collage of vandalised election posters by Manit Sriwanichpoom, titled The Election Of Hatred, is one of the most striking pieces at "Concept Context Contestation: Art And The Collective In Southeast Asia", an exhibition featuring over 50 pieces from 40 artists in the Asean region.
The theme is not exactly Thai politics _ the show, one of the largest to have gathered contemporary Southeast Asian works, conceptualises issues that shape each country in the region, from haunting pasts to uncertain presents. But politics _ or what politics have inspired _ emerges as a potent force, especially from Thai artists, while the turmoil taking place right outside the gallery's doors lends the show a forceful, almost sinister timeliness.
"I hope this is an exhibition that everyone, especially the protesters, would come and see," said Vipash Purichanont, a Thai curator who co-created the show. "Art has a way of speaking to viewers, which is different from all the talk we hear on television or what we see in Facebook right now."
Vipash worked with two other curators, Agung Hujatnikajennong from Indonesia and Iola Lenzi from Singapore, to put the show together. Genesis is the buzzword of Asean, but from a curatorial perspective, "Concept Context Contestation" is an attempt to go further and "investigate the close connection between conceptual approaches and social ideologies in Southeast Asian contemporary art of the last four decades", according to the curators. Thus the exhibition collects works from established as well as upcoming artists, with a diversity of formats including painting, photography, text-based works and installation pieces. It manages to include representations from every country in the region except Brunei and Laos.
The pull of history and the urgency of the now are prominent. Politics, religion, transformation _ the interplay between these factors, past and present, seems to be a conceptual foundation. Vandy Rattana from Cambodia, for instance, shows Khmer Rouge Trial (2003), a 16-panel photography piece showing televised images of the country's war crimes tribunal as history played out to layers of spectatorship. Imelda Cajipe Endaya from the Philippines touches on her country's colonialism in Forefathers, I, II and III. Also from the Philippines, Elmer Borlongan hangs his Bendisyon, showing a priest with a long, red tongue. From Indonesia, Moelyono offers a hypnotic, potentially controversial installation piece, The Animal Sacrifice Of D'Orde Barn (1997), which uses sculpture, video and a taped recital of Koranic verses to simulate an underground ritual prayer performed by students to oppose the Suharto regime.
But given the existing noise on the Bangkok streets, politically charged works from Thai artists becomes the most expressive _ and most pieces weren't even specially created for the exhibition. When he started curating months ago, Vipash planned to highlight Thai politics, but ''didn't know it would turn out to be this pronounced''. Besides Manit's posters, veteran Vasan Sitthiket has three works in the show, including Blue October Series (1996), a set of paintings that depicts the inhuman atrocities of the Oct 6, 1976 Thammasat University massacre. Another of Vasan's pieces features dozens of small sculptures resembling the artist himself _ naked, his penis erect_ holding placards on which viewers can express themselves on various issues (''Reform'', ''Election'', ''Corrupt government''). Called Lost Info, the piece was created after the red-shirt crackdown in 2010, yet still resonates, directly and sarcastically, with the current situation.
''Art has its autonomy, but it has to be juxtaposed with something, or with the context outside of it,'' says Vipash. ''When artists from other countries arrived at BACC to install their works weeks ago, the first wave of [the Suthep Thuagsuban-led] mob was forming outside our doors. The reaction from each Southeast Asian artist was interesting. Those from Vietnam and Singapore were excited about the protest, because they didn't see it a lot in their countries. Whereas artists from Indonesia were puzzled that our protests were more like entertainment _ in their countries, it was rougher.
''Still, the works by Thai artists feels stronger than works from other Asean countries because we have more freedom to express our political feelings. Compared to the rest, we seem more in-your-face, even.''
Case in point, Sutee Kunavichayont's History Class Part 2 lines up several wooden school tables, their surfaces engraved with texts from historic moments in our political timeline _ King Rama VII's abdication speech, newspaper headlines from the dictatorship era, the infamous ''it's not a sin to kill communists'' preaching from the 1970s, the Black May incident of 1990. Again, the spectre of relevance, of how the shadow of the past is stalking the present, is unmistakable.
Which brings us back to Manit's photographs. The Election Of Hatred greets vistiors at the gallery. Manit took the photos before the 2011 general election and after the tense period of red-shirt protests and subsequent crackdowns. The exhibited pieces are actual photos of defaced election posters he captured along Rama IV, Klong Toei and Sukhumvit. Then, as now, the air was filled with frustration, pent-up anger and antagonism.
''To me, the expression of intense violence _ the slashing of faces and gouging of eyes _ almost looks like an act of voodoo,'' says Manit. ''It's like when a witch doctor puts a curse on someone.''
And because the characters in the two-year-old posters remain almost the same now, the piece, which has never been exhibited before, also suggests a repetition of history, a vicious cycle that is still running.
''We haven't moved on,'' says Manit. ''Right now you still see election posters being vandalised. Nothing has changed. Maybe it even gets more violent.''
''There are many barriers we're concerned about when we put up a show about Southeast Asia, like language and the knowledge of our neighbour's history,'' adds Vipash. ''But right now, there's another kind of barrier outside the museum. I hope what we're showing inside and what's going on outside can have some kind of dialogue. That way the barrier can be lifted, at least for now.''
''Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia'' is on show until March 2 at BACC. As of yesterday, the museum was closed due to the street protests, and is likely to remain shut for a few more days. Visit www.facebook.com/baccpage or www.bacc.or.th for updates.
A painting in Vasan Sitthiket’s Blue October Series, which depicts the brutality of Oct 6, 1976.
