Art and Globalism - Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

Araya (born 1957 in Trad, Thailand) is a Thai artist and professor of Fine arts at Chaing Mai University. She works in multiple disciplines including painting, installation, video, performance, printmaking and writing. Through her practice Araya has explred the transcendental possibilities of art; this exploration has facilitated Araya's disregard for cultural boundaries (which is manifested in her work from the 17th Biennale of Sydney). In this work Araya places masterpieces from 19th century artists in front of a contemporary audience from rural Thailand. By exposing these works to a new audience Araya is not only collapsing cultural boundaries (a common practice that concerns globalisation) but also bridging an historical void that spans between the original context of the paintings and the modern one.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Manet's Dejeuner sur I'herbe 1862 1863 and the Thai villagers group II, 2008–09, from 'The Two Planets Series', photograph and video, 110 x 100 cm; 16 mins. Courtesy the artist.

"Conversation is a deep conceptual thread throughout Rasdjarmrearnsook’s work. In the 17th Biennale of Sydney, she shows three videos from The Two Planets Series, which she commenced in 2007. These works interweave two separate worlds: nineteenth-century France and modern rural Thailand. She brings farmers, gardeners and villagers who live nearby to a rice field to look at and discuss life-size reproductions of iconic works by Édouard Manet (Le déjeuner sur l’Herbe, 1863), Vincent van Gogh (The Midday Sleep, 1889–90) and Jean-François Millet (The Gleaners, 1857) that she had set up on easels. The audience – oblivious to the cultural or economic baggage associated with these works – speaks about them with a freedom Rasdjarmrearnsook had found lacking in her own students. The audience guess and make assumptions about what they see, questioning the scenarios and human relationships in each work. With humour and in broad Thai slang, the group raises issues over interpretation and experience: what we see is what we know about; but also, what do we need to know about art, and what can it tell us?"

http://www.bos17.com/biennale/artist/87