Representing Thailand at this year’s 54th Venice Biennale, artist Navin Rawanchaikul presents his latest site-responsive multimedia exhibition, Places of Rebirth, at Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai.
Building upon the 2008 exhibition, Navinland Cinema, the Thai artist of Hindu-Punjabi descent returns to India on an intimate autobiographical odyssey that retraces ancestral memory and the Diaspora that took his family from India and Pakistan to Thailand. Geographically split between his hometown of Chiang Mai in Thailand’s north, and his adoptive home of Fukuoka, Japan, much of Rawanchaikul’s recent creative output attempts a resolution of duality and dislocation.
Since the early 1990s, the 40-year-old artist has become renowned for creating an animated and accessible brand of situational art, which incorporates an entertaining theatre of media, methods, and collaborative characters. Creating elaborate egocentric narratives that blur fact and fantasy, his artistic approach involves direct interventions, social commentary, and an innovative style of integrating community or individual experiences.
Incorporating expansive movie billboard style paintings, sculpture, diarist prose, poetic video and sound installation, the exhibition also features participatory engagement for visitors to recant their own place of rebirth. Exploring aspects of community from a geo-cultural perspective, Places of Rebirth is loaded with implications to resettlement, immersion and acceptance.
About the Artist
Born in 1971 in Chiang Mai, Navin Rawanchaikul has developed a unique and vast body of works that question modern systems of artistic production and presentation, seeking ways to put art in touch with the lives of everyday people. His work is often produced under the banner of Navin Production, his production team and studio. In 1995, he initiated his landmark project Navin Gallery Bangkok, in which an ordinary Bangkok taxicab was transformed into a mobile art gallery. Its great success prompted several versions of the Taxi Gallery around the world including Sydney, London, Bonn and New York. In 2006 the Navin Party was founded to unite Navins of the world under the common bond of a first name.
In addition to a series of community-based art projects that he has continually presented in his home country, Rawanchaikul has held solo shows at prestigious institutions including New York’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre (2001), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002), Jim Thompson Art Centre in Bangkok (2006) and Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2009) among being included in several international art exhibitions and festivals. His works are housed in the collection of international art centres and museums including Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, National Art Gallery in Singapore, FRAC in France, Pinchuk Art Centre in Ukraine, Moderna Museet in Sweden and Inhotim in Brazil.
In 2010, Rawanchaikul awarded the national Silapathorn citation from the Thai Ministry of Culture in the respected field of Visual Arts. He represents Thailand for the 54th International Art Exhibition at Venice Biennale in 2011. The artist divides his time between his family in Fukuoka, Japan, and his hometown of Chiang Mai where Navin Production is based. More information about the artist and Navin Production: www.navinproduction.com
