The Thai Ferrari, made from woven rattan by Chiang Rai locals, will park at the Venice Biennale this year.
"It can't run, obviously," said Anon Pairot of his rattan sports car. "The curator once remarked that somehow it was like Thailand. We build things, but we don't really go anywhere."
The 57th Venice Biennale begins on May 13. The once-every-two-year rendezvous of curators, collectors and global art enthusiasts taking place around the lagoon city is considered one of the world's most prestigious art events. This year -- besides the national pavilion hosted by the Thai government -- two young Thai artists have been curated by Alamak!, a private project created by Yoichi Nakamuta and Stefano Casciani. Put together under the theme "Islands In The Stream", the show features Anon's rattan Ferrari and Kawita Vatanajyankur's splashy-coloured and feminist-minded video art that lays bare the role of women in the home.
The Venice Biennale usually attracts audiences to the rows of national pavilions, where each country showcases their selected artists (Thailand has picked Somboon Hormtientong this year). But around town there are also several private pavilions that curate works of international artists regardless of national representation.
"Most artists featured at the Venice Biennale are established, but I find it more challenging to look for younger artists, especially from Southeast Asia," said Nakamuta, one of the curators of Alamak! who was in Bangkok last week to announce the project.
Anon's post-craft vehicle, called Chiang Rai Ferrari, wasn't intended to be art at first. Working mainly as product designer, Anon was asked by the Commerce Ministry to give advice to local craftsmen under the One Tambon One Product (Otop) initiative. In Chiang Rai three years ago, he worked with farmers who did wickerwork as a means to supplement their income.
The designer was trying to push the locals to come up with original ideas when he asked them what sounded like a tricky question: what is it they want the most in their lives?
"I didn't expect them to actually answer me, but one man called me a week later to tell me that he wanted to entertain his kid, and that his kid wanted a car," said Anon.
Thus began the year-long project to make a Ferrari from woven rattan. No one had ever seen a real Ferrari before and Anon and the craftsmen only researched from the internet. They didn't follow any ratio, and Anon didn't do any drawing. They just built it, weaving rattan wires into the car as imagined in their head.
The finished Chiang Rai Ferrari was larger than the real Italian sports steed. It can't run, naturally, but you can sit in it and open the hood. Had they had more time, Anon said, they would have made a fake engine too.
"I wanted to show them that their weaving skill can actually build a car," Anon said. "We didn't have any goal but to make it, and there were times when they just gave up and we had to stop for a few months before resuming. But in the end we got the car."
A symbolic reading of the piece is rich: Thailand seems capable of modernity, we have things that look modern, but it's not real modernity.
The confrontation between the old and the new, between old tradition and new question, is visible in a playful and yet caustic manner in another work to be presented in Venice: Kawita Vatanajyankur's The Scale Of Justice is a set of video art featuring the artist in a series of physically demanding performances as she lets body imitate the function of household gears. The woman -- her physical existence -- is a machine capable of completing daily chores that keep the kitchen and house in order.
In one video, we see Kawita's squeezing an orange with her mouth -- mimicking the movement of a squeezer. In another, her hair is a yellow tangle of noodles being cooked in a bowl of hot water. In yet another, her body is balanced on a pol resembling a scale, with two heavy vegetable basket hung from her head and legs.
Her concept, says Kawita, is to show how the woman's body is a chore. "I live near a market, and I expanded the idea by looking at women as part of the workforce, how we have to work hard, carry heavy things, doing tough physical jobs -- all using our body."
Some of Kawita's videos in The Scale Of Justice have been exhibited in Japan, others are new addition she has made for the dual show in Venice show next month.
Chiang Rai Ferrari by Anon Pairot. Photos © Anon Pairot
