'Sex and bombs, all you need is sex and bombs to make the world go round," says veteran Thai artist Vasan Sitthiket, commenting on a 2011 painting from his "Sex Bomb: 24 Hours" series -- a portrait of himself drawn atop a scantily clad woman's body in a seductive pose, a bombshell by his side. Although the series is a denunciation of the modern pornography -- money, power and lies -- that we are fed on a daily basis, there's more to Vasan's work than just lust and violence.
On display at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) until May 27, the career-spanning exhibition "I Am You" features over 100 of the artist's works and covers a vast gamut of Thai political life since the 1970s as seen through Vasan's eyes.
One of the best-known Thai artists of his generation, Vasan, 60, sees art as activism and the artist as activist who uses art as a "weapon" to denounce the country's sociopolitical woes. Since the 1970s he has been known for his vivid condemnation of capitalism, corruption and crooks; his works, personality and point-blank commentaries have made him a pivotal, and controversial, figure in Thailand's contemporary art scene, especially in the decades of the country's fast transformation into market capitalism of the 1990s and 2000s.
But "I Am You" -- a retrospective of sorts curated by Apinan Poshyananda and Adulaya Hoontrakul -- allows the audience to look beneath this persona and bear witness to the formation of Vasan's beliefs and ideology since the beginning of his career.
"One can live meaningfully only by living for others" -- Vasan's life philosophy, as taught to him by his mother, is the departure point of the exhibition, which is called after a previous show the artist presented in 1993.
The first instalment explores the modest origins of Vasan's maternal family -- his mother and grandmother came from a farming community, while his father served as a doctor.
"I come from two cultures," he adds, mindful of his roots but also of the opportunities he was given to study art and become an artist.
His oil paintings and watercolours from the late 1970s and 1980s demonstrate Vasan's early interest for the lives of common people -- farmers and workers whom he observed and would later champion through his works. By his own admission, the tragedy of the October 1976 events was crucial to Vasan's realisation that the majority of Thais' poor living conditions were a result of the oppression exerted on them by the ruling class.
Indeed, Vasan best represents the repressive facets of power, be it through a black boot crushing over a drawing of the artist's head or an imaginary shadow play theatre. Often binary, the artist's works displayed in the successive sections of the show portray his worldview of a society divided between the good and the bad, the oppressor and the oppressed, the powerful and the powerless.
This outlook appears to reach a peak under the Shinawatra government era in the 2000s, during which Vasant worked on a series of caricatural paintings with evocative titles such as Nevermind, Let's Get Gold For The Nation's State or Farts And Feces Of The Farang Are The Most Fragrant.
Politicians in Vasan's works of the time are depicted as giant monitor lizards (in Thai, these are also called hia, possibly the crudest slang word) as they attend Parliament sessions or feast over the bodies of fellow Thais. Meanwhile, in a 2009 painting titled Stimulate The Economy, statesmen arouse each other, engaging in orgies with foreign institutions such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank while Vasan asks: "Where has all the money gone?"
While the ruling class is colluding with businesses and all but begging for foreign interference, the vast majority of Thais, on the other hand, are portrayed as powerless, unwitting prey with no grip whatsoever on their own future -- let alone the country's. This patronising outlook nevertheless leads to some of Vasan's most powerful works presented in the exhibition.
In a large floor installation titled Thai Propaganda Culture, the artist has replicated a common rural scene, with a loudspeaker placed on top of a pole playing propaganda-like messages, a continuous brainwashing of the people's minds. Beneath the pole, bundles of straw are arranged in neat lines facing pots containing incense sticks, as a reminder of the farmers' plight when they have no options but to wait and pray for salvation.
A decade before the 1997 economic crisis hit Thailand, Vasan already targeted banks for encouraging loans despite imposing harsh conditions on lenders, that eventually crushed the lives of countless impoverished Thais. In 1986, he imagined to paint over the façades of financial institutions with human blood, giving way to his "Blood Bank" series through which he signified economic abuse.
In the later parts of the exhibition, Vasan's artistic practice as a tool of protest is further highlighted through his conceptual works, mocking party politics and the very basis of Thailand's political system through conceptual works. In the first half of the 2000s, the "For Me Party" and subsequent "Artist Party" directed particularly biting sarcasm and criticism towards the then all-powerful Thai Rak Thai party headed by Thaksin Shinawatra.
Although "I Am You" doesn't follow Vasan's career evolution in chronological order, the exhibition's structure allows visitors to understand his path from ideology to action. Still, politicians aren't the only figures targeted by the artist cum activist.
Corrupt monks, corporations, international power players and Thailand's generals aren't left unscathed either, appearing as sinners and hungry ghosts in his life-sized 1991 Inferno as well as in his more recent piece Preta completed last year. A myriad of personalities in positions of power had Vasan's attention in the past decades, but American president George W Bush and the now-exiled Thaksin are probably the two most referenced figures in the exhibition -- despite Thaksin never being directly named.
The development of Thailand towards a capitalist economy driven by "greedy" politicians, as viewed by Vasan, seems to be in agreement with the path followed by foreign powers. From the 2000s onwards, the artist closely followed international developments and crises, from the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks to the Iraq war, denouncing the increased militarisation of the world through his paintings and installations.
Evidently, recent additions were made to his 2004 Shadow Play theatre piece, a satire of the world's political stage where all is lies and deception, introducing new "characters" -- namely US President Donald Trump and Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon, his arms covered in luxury watches.
As outspoken in his everyday life as he is in his art, Vasan regularly shares his political views on social media, a medium the curators of "I Am You" have devoted a piece to, at the very end of the exhibition. Messages, which can be found on Vasan's Facebook page, were printed on protest panels, in order to share them with a wider audience that isn't restricted to his friends, thus enlarging the debate or conversation zone.
Since 2014, Thailand's art scene has known censorship on a number of counts. Vasan has pronounced himself in support of the artists and anonymous graffiti artists who, through their works, push for the powers-that-be to be held accountable for their actions. Vasan himself has been through censorship. But today, while his powerful and incendiary works are exhibited at the BACC, smaller galleries and mural artists are facing increased scrutiny by the authorities.
