ncr
04-09-05, 07:34 PM
Interesting article (http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2005/09/03/art/index.php?news=art_18505552.html) from the Nation. The printed edition included a couple of pictures, of course.
Attention, class
Published on September 03, 2005
We all get stuck in boxes by our teachers and the government, but Sutee Kunavichayanont figures there’s a way out
Art instructor Sutee Kunavichayanont wants to see you in his classroom at 100 Tonson Gallery, but don’t come dreading more boring art history – this isn’t really serious stuff. Just follow his instructions and try and think “out of the box”.
“Stereotyped Thailand” is a classroom with 16 old-fashioned wooden desks in front of a blackboard that has drawings of a female student. She instructs you, by diagram, to use the provided blank paper and coloured pencils to make rubbings from the carvings in the lids of the desks.
You can take them home to show your mum, but she’ll probably only want to know who’s been carving up the desks. They’re wonderful carvings, though: playful, satirical pictures about being Thai, educational methods, the autocracy and the pace at which the world is “progressing”.
You can rub away at one desk and get a picture of a girl stepping from a traditional Siamese river canoe to an elaborate royal-style barge – or is the other way around? Another desk has a portrait of a wai-ing man wearing a too-large suit jacket over his sarong. The Siamese twins are here too, but not Chang and Eng – one is a boy in a topknot, the other Mickey Mouse. There’s a swastika on another desk, but it’s got kanok – the curlicues of classical Siamese architecture – at each end.
“Whenever we mention Thai art and culture we generally have stereotyped perceptions of icons like the kanok or Wat Phra Kaew, or the floating markets and the Siamese smiles. They’re all nostalgic images of the Kingdom,” says Sutee, a co-curator of the Thai pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.
The gallery wall is papered with the repeated image of a graceful Thai woman performing the wai. She’s interrupted only by a hung print entitled “Stereotyped Thailand (Students in Rows)” – more repetition. The multiplied students’ hair is neatly groomed, their uniforms clean, and all sit with hands in laps in well-behaved order. “The repetition represents identical thinking,” says Sutee, 40. “Our country has no variety in the thinking process. The educational system doesn’t allow us to think beyond certain accepted norms.”
[This had already occurred to me a long time ago, but I never saw it expressed this explicitly before.]
Elsewhere, and far more jarring, are cut-outs of a classic Siamese hero and heroine – the patriotic pair clasping swords – straight from history-book illustrations by the late Hem Vejakorn. “We’re programmed to automatically recall the bloody battles through which our ancestors struggled to unite our country. Our history should be more varied, to cover other angles like anthropology and ethnography.
“The pin-ups are drawn in a realistic style and play with the weight of light and shadow to get a sense of powerfulness. When viewed from a distance they look like solid pieces of wood. Approach and you see they are but thin wooden sheets with nothing at the back.”
Sutee has been developing the mock-classroom theme since 2000. It first appeared in a group show near the Democracy Monument that celebrated the Pridi Banomyong centenary. He set out 14 desks engraved with royal and authoritarian decrees and since the time of Rama V. Again, people could make rubbings to take home, selections from a political history that Sutee believes has been expunged from the textbooks.
Several rubbings from that exhibit are on display at the current show to lend some perspective on this ongoing project. At his 2003 Silpakorn University group show, Sutee squared up his 14 desks in front of a screen that showed a video of him in a traditional teacher’s uniform trying to instil some culture and manners in his students.
The lessons continue.
And “Stereotyped Thailand” continues until October 2. The 100 Tonson Gallery, at 100 Soi Tonson off Ploenchit Road, is open Thursday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. For more information, call (02) 684 1527.
Khetsirin Pholdhampalit
Attention, class
Published on September 03, 2005
We all get stuck in boxes by our teachers and the government, but Sutee Kunavichayanont figures there’s a way out
Art instructor Sutee Kunavichayanont wants to see you in his classroom at 100 Tonson Gallery, but don’t come dreading more boring art history – this isn’t really serious stuff. Just follow his instructions and try and think “out of the box”.
“Stereotyped Thailand” is a classroom with 16 old-fashioned wooden desks in front of a blackboard that has drawings of a female student. She instructs you, by diagram, to use the provided blank paper and coloured pencils to make rubbings from the carvings in the lids of the desks.
You can take them home to show your mum, but she’ll probably only want to know who’s been carving up the desks. They’re wonderful carvings, though: playful, satirical pictures about being Thai, educational methods, the autocracy and the pace at which the world is “progressing”.
You can rub away at one desk and get a picture of a girl stepping from a traditional Siamese river canoe to an elaborate royal-style barge – or is the other way around? Another desk has a portrait of a wai-ing man wearing a too-large suit jacket over his sarong. The Siamese twins are here too, but not Chang and Eng – one is a boy in a topknot, the other Mickey Mouse. There’s a swastika on another desk, but it’s got kanok – the curlicues of classical Siamese architecture – at each end.
“Whenever we mention Thai art and culture we generally have stereotyped perceptions of icons like the kanok or Wat Phra Kaew, or the floating markets and the Siamese smiles. They’re all nostalgic images of the Kingdom,” says Sutee, a co-curator of the Thai pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.
The gallery wall is papered with the repeated image of a graceful Thai woman performing the wai. She’s interrupted only by a hung print entitled “Stereotyped Thailand (Students in Rows)” – more repetition. The multiplied students’ hair is neatly groomed, their uniforms clean, and all sit with hands in laps in well-behaved order. “The repetition represents identical thinking,” says Sutee, 40. “Our country has no variety in the thinking process. The educational system doesn’t allow us to think beyond certain accepted norms.”
[This had already occurred to me a long time ago, but I never saw it expressed this explicitly before.]
Elsewhere, and far more jarring, are cut-outs of a classic Siamese hero and heroine – the patriotic pair clasping swords – straight from history-book illustrations by the late Hem Vejakorn. “We’re programmed to automatically recall the bloody battles through which our ancestors struggled to unite our country. Our history should be more varied, to cover other angles like anthropology and ethnography.
“The pin-ups are drawn in a realistic style and play with the weight of light and shadow to get a sense of powerfulness. When viewed from a distance they look like solid pieces of wood. Approach and you see they are but thin wooden sheets with nothing at the back.”
Sutee has been developing the mock-classroom theme since 2000. It first appeared in a group show near the Democracy Monument that celebrated the Pridi Banomyong centenary. He set out 14 desks engraved with royal and authoritarian decrees and since the time of Rama V. Again, people could make rubbings to take home, selections from a political history that Sutee believes has been expunged from the textbooks.
Several rubbings from that exhibit are on display at the current show to lend some perspective on this ongoing project. At his 2003 Silpakorn University group show, Sutee squared up his 14 desks in front of a screen that showed a video of him in a traditional teacher’s uniform trying to instil some culture and manners in his students.
The lessons continue.
And “Stereotyped Thailand” continues until October 2. The 100 Tonson Gallery, at 100 Soi Tonson off Ploenchit Road, is open Thursday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. For more information, call (02) 684 1527.
Khetsirin Pholdhampalit