The art of work
Thai contemporary visual artist Kawita Vatanajyankur is taking viewers to explore everyday and domestic work of Thai women through the video art exhibition, “Tools”, which is running at The Jam Factory until Jan 10.
It shows that, for many, daily chores aren’t always assisted by electronic contraptions or white goods but are time-consuming, exhausting and often the task of women.
The videos’ happy, day-glow colours, dark humour and undercurrents of violence, however, bring a contemporary currency to the historical trajectory of feminist art. It is telling that she describes her performances as “meditation postures” when such gruelling tests of resilience and fear are quite the opposite of what we might think of as Zen.
But, for Vatanajyankur, extreme physical endurance offers a way to free herself from her mind — a mechanism to lose her sense of being. This deliberate objectification, she says, turns her body into sculpture.
The Jam Factory is on Charoen Nakhon Road and opens daily from 11am- 8pm. Call 02-861-0955.