Australia Stills Gallery stands for an extraordinary program when it comes to new photographic positions and emerging art talent. The gallery is now presenting work groups by Thai performance artist and photographer Kawita Vatanajyankur. She was also among 23 Thai artists whose work appeared at London's Saatchi Gallery as part of the extensive 'Thailand Eye' exhibition at the beginning of the year.
In her new photo series 'Machinized', Kawita Vatanajyankur becomes the tool herself as a moving part of a machine: “She transforms herself into food production equipment in performance videos that re-stage processes such as boxing eggs and weighing leafy greens. Like her previously celebrated works, this new series is graphic and glorious, sharing the same eye-catching allure that enamors us to ads. The confronting nature of her endurance performances, however, interrupts this seductive surface.
The repetitive and arduous tasks that Vatanajyankur performs parody a pervasive slippage between human and machine, and foreground the forgotten body within a technologically accelerating world. Beyond this literal translation, these gestures also make visible the invisible mechanisms that govern women’s everyday labour in her birthplace of Thailand. In both contexts, paring seduction and confrontation proves a powerful device in Vatanajyankur’s hands – a Trojan horse for tackling entrenched attitudes toward gender, equality and work.
In The Scale of Justice (2016), for instance, the artist becomes a traditional ‘beam scale’, balancing hanging baskets from her arms and feet. Against the jewel-colored backdrop of sapphire pink, the baskets fill up and overflow with luscious green veg while we watch as her balance and composure are increasingly tested, her corporeal and psychological limits measured. Vatanajyankur’s self-deprecating humor is also seductive. In Egg Holder (2016), she even invites her face to be egged. Aiming to catch the projectiles in her mouth in this ill-fated feat, her yoke-covered face is displayed over half a dozen screens.
Vatanajyankur’s deliberate self-objectification suggests that our bodies are a medium for submission but also for resistance. This brave, beautiful and playful work frees her from a culture of compliance but also from her mind. As she explains, it turns her body into sculpture.
Kawita Vatanajyankur graduated in Fine Art from RMIT University in 2011. Receiving critical acclaim early in her career, her work has been featured in national and international exhibitions including, Thailand Eye, Saatchi Gallery, London & Bangkok Art & Cultural Centre (2015-2016); Video oediV, Campbelltown Arts Centre (2016); Cornucopia, Shepparton Art Museum (2016); Finalist, Jaguar Asia Tech Art Prize, Art Taipei, Taiwan; PROXIMITY, National Museum, Poland (2014); The Encyclopedic Palace: Melbourne Offsite for the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); BorderBody, MECA, Spain & Gallery MD_S, Poland (2013); Ikono On Air Festival, Germany (2013); and Channels Festival, Melbourne (2013). Australian Art Collector featured her work on the cover.
STILLS is a leading Australian gallery with a focus on contemporary photography and multimedia art. The gallery, established in 1991, is housed in a converted warehouse with a large exhibition and printroom space in Paddington, Sydney’s main gallery precinct. STILLS represents both emerging and established artists, and has a long history of fostering artists who work at the forefront of contemporary photo media practice.