TRAUMA AND CARE | Korakrit Arunanondchai, Orawan Arunrak, Dusadee Huntrakul, Nawin Nuthong, Tae Parvit, Miti Ruangkritya, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Tanat Teeradakorn and Dhanut Tungsuwan
18.09–31.10.2021

Amidst the mire of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trauma and Care breaks the seclusion of quarantine through a group presentation featuring 9 Thai artists that BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY has engaged with extensively. As a physical exhibition that simultaneously manifests online in the form of the gallery’s first online VIEWING ROOM presentation, both the exhibition’s format and title are reflective of the current global circumstances and urgencies.
Trauma and Care showcases a selection of artworks created within the past two years. The recency of the works’ creation reaffirming their relationship to the zeitgeist of the period. As protests precipitated by the lagging COVID-19 response continue to occupy the streets and remain a mainstay in media reporting, the associated trauma is experienced repeatedly both first-hand and vicariously by artist and layperson alike. Consequently, the range of materials and imageries employed in the creation of these artworks reflect the urban atmosphere, giving further emphasis to the relationships existing between them, the city, and its inhabitants.
An exhibitionary response to this scenario is emblematic of the potential for art as an avenue for catharsis and expressions of solidarity and concern. It emerges as a means of igniting conversations that speculate the way forward. Displaying these artworks in close proximity to each other within the gallery space, their placements catalyse dialogues between different artistic practices as well. In spanning a breadth of artistic responses – from nihilism to optimism, satire to serenity – the relevance of these artworks exceeds national boundaries, touching on the fundamental human need to process injury and begin the healing process.
SCREENING
Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Clean your Desktop!, 2021, Single channel video, color, sound, 3 min. © 2021 Chulayarnnon Siriphol.
AVAILABLE ARTWORKS

Korakrit Arunanondchai | Painting with History (The end of the universe is an icey nothingness) | 2021 | Bleached denim and inkjet print on canvas, aluminum stretcher | 218.4 x 162.6 x 3.8 cm | © 2021 Korakrit Arunanondchai
UNAVAILABLE

Dusadee Huntrakul | Workers Union Ensemble | 2020 | Ceramic | 19H x 7.5D cm, 21.5H x 7.5D cm, 16.5H x 10.5W x 7D cm, 23H x 8.5W x 6D cm, 17H x 9D cm, 21.5H x 9.5W x 6.5D cm, 24H x 10.5W x 7.5D cm | © 2020 Dusadee Huntrakul
UNAVAILABLE

Dhanut Tungsuwan | Angler | 2021 |Oil on canvas | 160 x 120 x 4 cm | © 2021 Dhanut Tungsuwan
UNAVAILABLE

Nawin Nuthong | root is me | 2021 | Digital print on fabric; video file | 89 x 160 cm; 1 min 53 sec | Edition of 8 plus 1 artist's proof | © 2021 Nawin Nuthong
INQUIRY

Chulayarnnon Siriphol | Clean your Desktop! |2021 | 15 Giclée prints on archival paper; wood frame with museum glass | 42 x 29.7 cm; 44 x 31.7 cm (each) | Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof | © 2021 Chulayarnnon Siriphol
INQUIRY

Tanat Teeradakorn | DOOM LOOP: OPERAS [ENIGMATIC MOTIFS] | 2021 | Digital print on fabric, uniforms, plush toy on metal fence | 200 x 300 x 20 cm | © 2021 Tanat Teeradakorn
UNAVAILABLE

Miti Ruangkritya | Sunset on Unnamed Lanes - Untitled (#02) | 2020 | Giclée print on Signbond; aluminum frame with museum acrylic | 112 x 96 cm; 112.5 x 96.5 x 3.5 cm | Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof | © 2020 Miti Ruangkritya
INQUIRY
INSTALLATION VIEW
ABOUT THE ARTIST

KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI
b. 1986, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in New York, USA and Bangkok
A visual artist, filmmaker and storyteller, Korakrit Arunanondchai employs his versatile practice to tell stories embedded in cultural transplantation and hybridity. His body of work merges fiction with poetry and offers synesthetic experiences engaged in a multitude of subjects primarily based on lives of family, friends, and colleagues as much as local myths. Surpassing a solitary artist, Arunanondchai is an avid collaborator who has worked on videos, performances and music together with an extensive list of people.

ORAWAN ARUNRAK
b. 1985, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok and Berlin, Germany
Orawan Arunrak’s work is largely inspired by her everyday life. Using tools like pencils, pens, paper, but also photography and the internet, she creates works that take the forms of drawing, painting and installation. Her practice is aimed at engaging in dialogue with local inhabitants in an attempt to merge the space of art and non-art. Repeatedly crossing national, cultural and spiritual borders, Arunrak’s work has examined likeness and difference within and between varied locations in both Asia and Europe where she has lived in recent years, and based on relationships she has with these places.

DUSADEE HUNTRAKUL
b. 1978, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok
A multi-disciplinary artist working across mediums of sculpture, ceramic, drawing, painting, and text. Seeking human connections that extend across time, his works span the topics of mortality, archaeology, anthropology, economics, and socio-cultural issues. Ever since seeing his late brother bring home funky fired ceramic pots that he made at a community college’s pottery class in the USA in 1998, something profound moved within him. He started working with clay almost twenty years ago at his uncle’s ceramic studio in Bangkok, and remains to this day, committed to using fired clay, language, and other materials to compose spaces that are familiar yet unknown.

NAWIN NUTHONG
b. 1993, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok
A Thai contemporary artist and curator exploring the connections between history and cultural media through a wide range of mediums. Melding myths and legends with pop-cultural references from video games, comics, and film, he examines the role technology has to play in reconfiguring the learning and understanding of history.

TAE PARVIT
b. 1993, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok
He expresses abstractions of reality through a myriad of means. Though practicing predominantly as a painter, his creative output has spanned the genres of animation, digital drawings, screen-printing, publication, music, performance, and to a lesser extent, mural painting as well. It is therefore unsurprising to find his paintings inflected with the characteristics of these varied genres, bearing nuanced traits of movement, textures, and narratives. Even though taking inspiration from personal experiences and the world around him, his works transcend merely being auto-biographical chronicles. Rather, he draws viewers into realms of colors that meld images, times, and stories in melodious harmony and counterpoint.

MITI RUANGKRITYA
b. 1981, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok
He is a visual artist whose photography practice expands into the realms of video, text, and publishing to express his ruminations centered on the notion of the City. His prolific body of work, catalyzed by his return to Thailand in 2010 following over a decade of education in England, chronicles personal responses to his everyday observations while articulating with sensitivity the urban urgencies of contemporary living. Spanning political upheaval, ecological change, dislocation, and economic inequalities, the range of topics explored across his oeuvre is further characterized by his extended and in-depth engagement with them, as evidenced by his varied and longstanding series of works such as Thai Politics (2006 – ongoing), Dream Property (2014 – ongoing), and Sunset (2018 – ongoing).

CHULAYARNNON SIRIPHOL
b. 1986, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok
Chulayarnnon Siriphol was born in 1986. He is interested in exploring new possibilities in creating moving images. He is thus working between the role of a filmmaker and an artist, using video as a medium. His works range from short film, experimental film, documentary to video installation which are in-between personal memory and social memory, documentary and fiction, reality and supernatural. Through these pieces, he questions the belief of virtue and ideal through sarcasm, illusions, and his own sense of humor. His short film Vanishing Horizon of the Sea won Special Mention from the 2014 Singapore International Film Festival.

TANAT TEERADAKORN
b. 1991 in Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok and Arnhem, Netherlands
Tanat Teeradakorn combines fragments of his biography, memory, data, and historical narrative where multiple fragments of story and information collide, juxtaposed, and transformed into a new body of work. His theme of research orbits on the issues around local myth, truck modification culture, club music, and discourse around contemporary media and technology.

DHANUT TUNGSUWAN
b. 1994, Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok and London, UK
Dhanut has an incessant love for science-fiction films with a distinctive atmosphere and escapade engrossing him while watching such a form of art. The experience manifests in his anecdotal paintings which may recall sunken memories. Dhanut’s subject matter is also drawn from his life in the era of over-saturated information which he acquired sources in making his paintings. The outcome is a juxtaposition of familiar and outlandish images traversing times and spaces.