The Changing Room
June 2024Thoughts after visiting the Thailand Biennale 2023
December 2023When I was living in the UAE, I was feeling slightly cynical about the overpowering message of “creating an emerging art scene”. I wonder why everyone keeps saying that. How does admitting that the art scene is small and developing impact how the creator feels in that region? Do they lose faith and seek better opportunities? Or, the potential spaces give hope. After being there for 5 years, I think the artists can feel both ways, even simultaneously. I think there’s always a lingering question in the mind of the artists: How to not feel inconsequential in this global art world where we seem to be well-connected, where movability is a given? Visiting the Thailand Biennale, this question surfaced again in my mind. Since the definition of art was created by the West, the modern art created in our region in the past was never been recognized as art, rather, it was seen as the ethnical race’s pursuit of beauty and religion that led to the creation of craft and artifact. Therefore, in the present time with growing importance in economy and politics, the light has started to shed more on the global south. The pressure of catching up to the Western-made definition of ‘art’ and owning our narrative has been the discussion of the contemporary art space. After Documenta 15, the art world recognized the potential in Southeast Asia as a fascinating place where idealistic, community-based value is cultivated organically. “In the future, the center of the art will be in south-east Asia”, they said. Even though Ruangrupa has been creating a community for decades, it is only after the recognition of the West that puts their practice in a global light. I wonder, without this international recognition, can Ruangrupa provide the same confidence to the artists and art professionals in that region? Throughout my experience of visiting the biennale, I see a challenge presented to the curator: How to be seen/recognized/validated as a legitimate art biennale, but also make it make sense to the local, existing art community that might not be under the Western recognition of what contemporary art practice means.
During our studio visit to Rirkrit Tiravanjia, we asked him about the struggle he faced while curating this festival. The Biennale was a governmentally funded initiative, supported by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture and the government of the selected province (this time Chaing Rai). Tiravanjia revealed that the institutional support was simply not enough to host such a large-scale exhibition. It was difficult for a government who has no idea what a biennale was to conduct enough support. Even though it is a continuous event that happens every two years, there was not a dedicated office. The staff who handles the artwork needs to be trained, the physical institution needs to be built. Many challenges occur in the logistic planning that shows Tiravanjia and the other curators that, it was difficult to build up a legitimate biennale from ground zero. The nomadic essence of the biennale also made it hard for one single government unit to continuously support and develop their strategy for this art event. However, this challenge also encouraged the curator to seek more alternative non-museum spaces. Some artworks are even set in the local farm field, making it a spontaneous viewing experience for those who happen to pass by that space. I wonder how will these new-built art institutions be utilized in the future once the biennale ends. Would there be enough funding to support future activities? Who would be the artists that exhibit there, and what kind of exhibition will be held? With these questions in mind, I started to wonder further: Why are so many places trying to create biennale? What does a biennale mean to create a culture and contribute to the art scene?
According to an essay written in 2018, it claims that there are around 320 biennales in the world. The growing interest in creating biennales interests me. I also realized that the quality of these events isn’t all that high. When I returned to Suzhou, my hometown, after living abroad for a while, I surprisingly heard that Suzhou is also hosting an international biennale. When I went to see the exhibition, it was a temporary exhibition hall constructed in the middle of a mall. Even though the poster states a big artist’s name like Andy Warhol, the work being shown is only printed. I was really disappointed and even felt ashamed to see such a biennale was being held. Rather than contributing to the art scene with great work, it seems to be an ‘event’ that pretends to showcase what people think art is, yet doesn’t fully respect the audience. In Chiang-rai, I believe that not all of the audiences participating in the biennale were art professionals or art lovers, but it was obvious that the biennale tried hard to incorporate local artists and residences, rather than give the audiences a fake illusion of what art should be. For example, I think the decision to host the exhibition in ‘touristic’ cultural spaces like the ‘white temple’ and ‘black temple’ inspired a new definition of art. I believe in many locals’ minds, that the white temple is a stunning art piece that touches their hearts as much as the piece Pierre Huyghe made. It also made me re-think what expectations/pre-judgments I had before I even thought about what art is in the local context. However, I did expect more radical/political art presented in this biennale. I was reading about Jiandyin, Redshirt Political Movement, Thanom Chapakdee, etc, and which seems to me that the political movement has been at the center of young, and older generation artists' minds. In an interview with Apinan Poshyananda on Tokyo Art Beats, a question about recent political issues was raised to him. He said in the exhibition, the biennale tries to respect their full expression, however, I wonder what their true experience was behind the scenes.