Thai artist challenges dualism between culture and nature
Sorawit Songsataya creates art that transcends their gender and their diasporic identity, using symbols and materials as intermediaries between their Thai culture and present life in New Zealand.
After migrating to Aotearoa in 2001, the non-binary queer artist said they had to find a space to create beyond Pākehā or Māori art.
Songsataya said their works try to occupy a third place between traditionally bipolar areas, such as gender.
“I deal with different mediums and very different ways of presentations, most often video installation ... with sculptural objects,” the multidisciplinary artist said.
Having exhibited in Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland, Songsataya now has pieces being showcased at New Plymouth’s Govett-brewster Art Gallery/len Lye Centre.
The Thai artist produces trans-disciplinary artworks using South Island limestones, beeswax, rattan (a South-east Asian climbing palm) and drone footage.
Songsataya moved to New Zealand from Chiang Rai, a mountainous city in Northern Thailand.
As part of a research trip in Northern Europe, Songsataya worked with Norwegian and Swedish Sámi – the indigenous people who inhabit an area across Finland, Sweden, Russia and Norway.
While in Europe, Songstaya went to a festival where indigenous communities from around the world were gathering and saw people crafting delicate silver bags made from fish skin and sowing sails from boats with animals skins and plants.
In 2019, Songsataya was awarded a Frances Hodgkins Fellowship by the University of Otago.
During the residency in Otago, Songstaya produced mixed art with Oamaru limestone, beeswax, cooking spices, fruit peels, fake nails and eyelashes, and mussels shells.
The limestone was given to Songsataya by mana whenua while the beeswax was used as a homage to Thai ritual ceremonies.
“In the past, I’ve carved limestone by hand, but this was the first time that I employed a high pressure water-jet carving machine based on my 3D models,” Songsataya said.
In the South Island, Songstaya also filmed white herons in their nesting territory and the footage was used to create a video installation mixing Thai phonetic signs and the birds hanging on trees.
Songstaya said some of the artworks were modelled after the columns of a Thai temple from the Sukhotai kingdom – a dynasty in South East Asia that reigned in the 13th century, during the emergence of Thai culture.
Fibrous Soul showcases works from the Otago period as well as newly composed pieces.
The new artworks comprise sculptures in the shape of Thai instruments, video footage of New Zealand rocks obtained with microscopes, dried rattan from Thai growers and woven mats.