Thasnai Sethaseree is passionately interested in how power and seduction fold into state and commercial imagery — particularly in his homeland, Thailand — and his practice investigates the relation of images to political projects dating from the Cold War onwards. His large-scale collages are distinguished by their iconography and the substantial collaging of cut or shredded coloured paper, a style based on a traditional Thai paper-cutting technique.
It’s unclearly clear, as yet incomplete 2017–21 is the result of more than a year of the artist’s research and has taken almost three years to create. Comprising 30–40 layers of paper on material, including stretched Buddhist monks’ robes, the triptych employs specific papers as content within compositions associated with structural problems in modern and contemporary Thailand, and beyond.
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Thasnai Sethaseree ‘It’s unclearly clear, as yet incomplete’ 2017-21
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Thasnai Sethaseree, Thailand b.1968 / It’s unclearly clear, as yet incomplete (detail) 2017–21 / Paper collage, Buddhist monk robes, urethane, metal / Three parts: 400 x 800cm (each) / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10). Purchased 2021 with funds from Metamorphic Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Thasnai Sethaseree / View full image
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Thasnai Sethaseree, Thailand b.1968 / It’s unclearly clear, as yet incomplete (detail) 2017–21 / Paper collage, Buddhist monk robes, urethane, metal / Three parts: 400 x 800cm (each) / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10). Purchased 2021 with funds from Metamorphic Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Thasnai Sethaseree / View full image
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Thasnai Sethaseree, Thailand b.1968 / It’s unclearly clear, as yet incomplete (detail) 2017–21 / Paper collage, Buddhist monk robes, urethane, metal / Three parts: 400 x 800cm (each) / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10). Purchased 2021 with funds from Metamorphic Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Thasnai Sethaseree / View full image
For Sethaseree, this is an historical project: the authoritative use of imagery or aesthetics in Thailand is evident. The references to Hell, Heaven and Earth suggest the triptych is equated with physical, spiritual and mythological zones of human existence. While appearing abstract from a distance, this cosmos is situated in urban Bangkok. The initial layer of each work is a photograph of the skylines of three of Bangkok’s financial and business districts — Silom, Pratunam and Siam Square areas — inverted, as if the artist hopes to reveal the underbelly of these districts. A flux of forms, defined by paper strips, are suspended on top. Images of cancer cells, scientific diagrams of tumours, prisms, images of the twilight sky, biological forms, lava flow, ghosts and skulls, ocean creatures, perspective images and sky maps from the date of coups in 2014, 2006 and 1991 respectively are layered together. The latter — maps charting the stars on the dates chosen for political disruption — reflect the artist’s critique of the fickle relationship with belief systems and ethics he observes in Thailand’s leaders, whose decisions often rely on irrational omens for success.
The triptych is a type of psychogeography of imaginary and historical social realities; in it, Sethaseree interweaves imagery of the final holy war from the Ramayana , the hell from the Buddhist Tribhum and the 1976 student massacre. The central work includes paper printed with Paul Simon’s lyrics for the 1965 song ‘The Sound of Silence ’ (suggesting ideas of censorship and diversion); text of the epic Ramayana is found amidst the shredded paper in the panel connoting Heaven; and a multitude of lottery tickets (a common expenditure for Thais) appear in the medium of the work on the right, depicting Hell. For the artist, the images form a type of historiography of Thainess in its particular mix of rational and sacred, order and improvisation, pre-modern and modern.
Sethaseree’s triptych confronts what he considers the immorality of easily consumed spectacle (in a nation where royal and military pomp and ceremony are legendary) and hints at the trust in chance, profiteering, sickness and corruption that he finds in Thai modern and contemporary culture. Visual magnificence and splendour are warning signs for what lies beneath.
Dr Zara Stanhope is Director, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, and former Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, QAGOMAThe 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art available in-store and online from the QAGOMA Store.
‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art ’ / Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane / 4 December 2021 to 25 April 2022
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Philippines-based artist Lee Paje’s two oil on copper works — a triptych The stories that weren’t told 2019 and Somewhere, someday when we are the sea 2021, a suspended 12-panel polyptych — were commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10).
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The Stories that Weren’t Told 2019 (illustrated) shows an imaginary landscape, melding elements from Filipino and Judeo-Christian origin myths into a hybrid creation story that envisages a new form of paradise. This exquisitely executed triptych painting on copper panels, which took more than three months to complete, draws on and transforms a formative childhood memory for Paje.
Stories are an important part of our lives. Growing up, stories are told to make sense of things and teach the way to live. They shape our beliefs about ourselves and others. They colour the lens through which we see the world. Lee Paje
When she was six, Paje was ill and made frequent visits to a children’s hospital in Quezon City. At this young and impressionable age, she often passed a huge mural, one of many artworks commissioned to decorate the hospital’s walls. The mural illustrated a creation myth from the pre-Spanish, pre-Catholic era, in which the first humans — a man and a woman — emerged from the two halves of a split stalk of bamboo. Marvelling at the image, Paje asked the nurses in the hospital what it meant; she was told it indicated how a man and woman were made for each other, as two parts of one whole. The title of the Tagalog origin myth, Malakas at Maganda, translates loosely as ‘The Strong and the Beautiful’, with the desirable attributes for each gender implied by the title. Even at such a young age, Paje felt she did not fit the mould or aspire to its outcome.
Lee Paje ‘The Stories that Weren’t Told’ 2019
The Stories that Weren’t Told is Paje’s response to the story of Malakas at Maganda. Throughout her practice, she has painted on copper — a now uncommon medium that was frequently used by artists during the Renaissance prior to the introduction of canvas and is particularly associated with grand narratives. Paje was attracted to copper for its link to Bible stories that reinforce gender stereotypes, as well as for its durability. The copper allows her to assert the ongoing loyalty and endurance of her work and her resolution that it will continue to challenge prevalent social, historical and cultural stereotypes.
Her triptych shows a landscape combining elements of tropical and temperate vegetation, with fruit trees and bamboo, around a central pool or lake. The copper shines through the paint, forming part of the composition and lending a luminousness to the scene. The landscape is populated by a group of primordial beings, unbound by gender, envisaged by Paje as human outlines filled with limitless and mysterious seascapes, like portals into the unknown. These beings are able to cast off the skin that defines their gender and identity as though it were a piece of clothing. In the foreground is a single primordial figure whose recognisably female skin lies on the ground near a half-eaten apple — the Christian symbol of original sin that saw Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise into a world of hardship and evil. In Paje’s painting, Eve’s sin has already taken place, yet humans still occupy this new paradise. A couple identifiable as Adam and Eve stand beneath a fruit tree. On the left, fluid ungendered humans emerge from stalks of bamboo in pairs while, in the far background, smoke rises from a city in flames.
Lee Paje ‘Somewhere, someday when we are the sea’ 2021
Stemming from the themes and symbols in her triptych, Somewhere, someday when we are the sea 2021 (illustrated) takes the form of a polyptych (historically an altarpiece of linked panels). Each panel is linked and suspended from the ceiling to allow the viewer to physically enter the space of the painting and to create an immersive experience. In Paje’s words:
A continuous landscape of different topographies forms once the panels are united. Viewers are invited to enter, traverse the space, partake in the journey with the primordial beings that roam the landscape and, perhaps, glimpse a paradise, a future.
For the artist, the contrasting experiences of the polyptych and the triptych are significant, as the bodily mode of engagement contributes to an understanding of the way we ‘receive, remember and render signals from social, economic and cultural constructs’. The viewer becomes the thread that ties the two works together and connects the meaning of the whole. Within this liminal space, with its forest and glades and vast internal seascapes, we are able to re-create the stories we were told and imagine new ones that represent us.
Abigail Bernal is Associate Curator, Asian Art, QAGOMA
This is an extract from the QAGOMA publication The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art available in-store and online from the QAGOMA Store.
‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10) / Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane / 4 December 2021 to 25 April 2022.
The fibrous souls 2018–21 currently in the Queensland Art Gallery Watermall is constructed with 70 giant shikas — embroidered, reticulated bags typically made of jute strings that are tied to a beam in the ceiling of houses and used to hold pots and food containers — Shikas are found in almost every house in rural Bangladesh and are traditionally made at home by families. Their designs, knotting and decoration varies between regions.
Kamruzzaman Shadhin and Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts expansive installation focuses on a part of Bengal’s complex and pervasive colonial history through personal stories of movement and displacement, the artwork articulates how a small part of the community came to settle in the surrounding villages.
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Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Bangladesh b.1974 / Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts, Bangladesh, est. 2001; Collaborating artists: Johura Begum, Monowara Begum, Majeda Begum, Fatema Begum (1), Shabnur Begum, Chayna Begum, Fatema Begum (2), Samiron Begum, Shirina Begum, Rekha, Nasima Begum, Shushila Rani, Protima Rani, Akalu Barman / The fibrous souls 2018–21 / Jute, cotton, thread, clay, brass / 70 pots: 40–100cm each (diam.) (approx.) with 70 shikas of various dimensions / Originally commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation / Purchased 2021 with funds from Metamorphic Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane / © The artists
Stories that inspired the artwork are drawn from families that had followed the railway tracks from what is now Bangladesh into India, after the British East India Company established the Eastern Bengal Railway. Operating under British Indian rule from 1892 to 1942, the railway served the profiteering trade interests of British India, fuelled by locally produced commodities such as jute, indigo and opium. The domination of these cash crops led to food scarcity, debt and land loss, forcing people — such as the ancestors of the Thakurgaon jute makers — to turn away from farming their own lands.
Families gradually left their homes to follow opportunities along the railway to Assam; however, during the 1947 Partition of India, they found themselves separated from their homes by a new national border, only to be forced back over from India into what had become East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). They settled along the Brahmaputra River in the regions by the new border dividing Bengal. As this vast river continually eroded, their plight turned from political to ecological migration, slowly moving westwards until they settled in Thakurgaon.
Over more than 20 years, Kamruzzaman Shadhin has developed new possibilities for contemporary art in Bangladesh, centred around the communities of his home village of Balia in the far north-western state of Thakurgaon. In 2001, he established Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts to work with local indigenous Santhal communities. The foundation seeks to be a catalyst for social inclusivity through collaborative approaches.
Shadhin is also one of Bangladesh’s foremost contemporary artists, known for his installations and performances that address environmental and social issues, particularly those facing regional Bangladesh and its communities. Together with Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts, he produces ambitious contemporary art projects, driven by the principles of community development and exploring shared culture and histories.
Working with 13 women hailing from jute-making families to construct the shikas, along with a handful of other local craftspeople to create the pots and connecting jute ropes, Shadhin and Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts have constructed a giant hanging system of shikas, laid out as the map of the historic Eastern Bengal Railway that began this story.
The women created their own designs on the shikas, so each is unique and features various wrapping and knotting techniques and additional decoration. The shikas hold brass, jute and clay storage pots, which are suspended over water for APT10. The hanging pots each symbolise the stations of towns and cities on the railway map — from Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Chittagong (now Chattogram) in the south, to Darjeeling and Guwahati in the north — signifying the defining role this piece of colonial infrastructure has played in shaping their lives. In Shadhin’s words, the installation is
an attempt to interweave these historical and cultural strands that seem apparently and innocently disconnected, and connect these to the present-day peasant conditions in Assam and Bengal.
The project draws together members of communities to explore their own stories and cultural practices — and is a product of the unique practice Shadhin and Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts have developed. Imbued with local and social values, it is a practice that advocates and finds in regional communities new pathways for contemporary art that are not reliant on art centres or global arts discourse, revealing new possibilities for art production to audiences far from where they emerge.
Tarun Nagesh is Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, QAGOMA
This is an edited extract from the QAGOMA publication The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art available in-store and online from the QAGOMA Store.
