Freezing The Moment: Designer’s talk
For 10 years, Sirikhwanthiwat Preesem has been with Thai design company Jarken, where she now serves as design associate. Her design of the CP Office in Silom was awarded in the category of office interior at the Asia Pacific Property Awards 2015-2016.
Together with Jarken’s award-winning design principal Sasivimol Sinthawanarong, Sirikhwanthiwat developed Freezing The Moment, chosen for display at SingaPlural. Sirikhwanthiwat said Freezing The Moment received quite a lot of positive feedback from visitors who approached her and discussed how she came up with the idea behind her work.
Sirikhwanthiwat talked to Life about Freezing The Moment.
How did the project come about? During my daily ride on Bangkok’s streets, I saw old cement textures and abandoned houses with lots of rusted steel. And personally, I’m intrigued by the natural characteristics of rust and have always seen it as art. So I wanted to highlight the nature of rust and the uncontrollability of it.
I then went to the Ministry of Public Health’s laboratory, asking experts about chemical substances that could corrode steel. In our experiments, we used these chemicals on pieces of steel, adding colours and acids to them. While the steel was being corroded by acids, we froze them with resin coating when we thought it reached the point we wanted. That’s why each piece of steel is different from the others — because we can never tell where and how the corrosion would end.
What’s interesting about it?
Each piece of steel was handmade, and the charming part of it was that it was always uncontrollable. During our production, we ended up with a lot of pieces that could never be used and had to be thrown away. But at the same time, it’s still a lot of fun.
What is the message you, as an artist, want to convey through the project?
As designers, we work every day with the same old materials. So through Freezing The Moment, the idea is to encourage people to look around and care more for things close to them.
How do you plan to further develop your project?
This project was actually initiated purely in response to my need [to find new materials to play with]. But indeed it needs more development and more comprehensive studies.
Right now the project is set to be shown at the Venice Biennale in May. It will be showcased there for six months.