A Blossom in the Middle of the Heart (City)1997Navin Gallery Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand A collaborative project between Navin Gallery Bangkok and traditional Thai muralist Suttisak Phutararak, the taxi’s interior roof was adorned with a replica mural scene from Bangkok Wat Bowonniwet’s temple. The depiction of a symbolic lotus flower was originally executed by Khrua In Khong, a 19th century monk-cum-muralist […]
A Dialogue With Oneself1996The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary ArtQueensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Playing with semiotics, language and how we intuitively perceive things in life, the piece was a small gallery within a gallery, inside which a different object was placed daily for each of the exhibition’s 119 day period. The selection of 119 items by exhibition organizers […]
Titled1996Kad Suan Kaew Shopping Mall, Chiang Mai, Thailand Titled presented the first name and surname of the elderly people in the villages around Chiang Mai who had been previously photographed for There is No Voice and other “bottle” series. With rubber stamp stencils, the names were printed across six large canvases. The three words I, Me, and Mine were inserted […]
Navin1996Home of Navin Rawanchaikul, Chiang Mai, Thailand Using private space for a public exhibition, Navin Rawanchaikul opened the doors to his family home in Chiang Mai for a biographical work containing old medicine bottles inside three Thai-style display cabinets. Each of the three wood and glass cabinets were stacked with empty bottles with a tiny label stuck on each […]
Asking for Nothingness1996Kad Suan Kaew Shopping Mall, Chiang Mai, Thailand First displayed in a shopping mall in Chiang Mai, a large installation comprising over 10,000 old medicine bottles arranged as pillars in a circle that visitors could squeeze through into the hollow circular interior. Looking at themes of emptiness, being and non-being, from the perimeter the exterior […]
Story of I1996Linkage/LeakageTank Art Center, Cairns, Australia With focus from personal to community, the project asked people to donate handkerchiefs once again, but unlike the positive response in Japan, in Australia it’s mainly only elderly women who carry such items, so the work was realized with many handkerchiefs from the local charity shop. A part of a group show at the Tang […]
History of I Exists in You1996Yumeooka, Yokohama, Japan Linking history with the present, Navin Rawanchaikul’s first ever commissioned public art work involved suspending a huge open book hung from the ceiling above an escalator inside a new mall in Yokohama. The outside cover was coated in an old image of a train station which had been relocated to […]
T(3)T1996Morphe – 96Aoyama Area and its Neighbourhoods, Tokyo, Japan Focusing on a simple personal keepsake for an art festival in downtown Tokyo, approximately 300 handkerchiefs were patched together as three car covers, using the notion of making something private public. The project invited people to send their handkerchiefs to collaborate in making this work of art, because in […]
Murozumi Danchi Art Project1996-98Murozumi Co-op Residency Building and Arizumi Community, Fukuoka, Japan Named after a co-op housing estate in Fukuoka where Navin Rawanchaikul first lived when he moved to Japan in 1996, the project began with a farewell event for abandoned cars parked along the riverside of this community. A series of workshop with children were developed with the collaboration of a community school, where […]
Untitled 1996 (traffic)1996Rirkrit TiravanijaNavin Gallery Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand For Rirkrit Tiravanija’s first exhibition in Thailand, he focused on Bangkok as a contemporary Asian metropolis struggling to cope with transport infrastructure and within that context the notion of taxis as global vehicles for public intervention and exchange. A somewhat nomadic artist, Rirkrit positioned three video monitors across the passenger seats, projecting footage […]