Women in Thai society have been placed in the space of the home. It is possible that women have assuredly taken up that place without thinking too critically about it.
What is difficult is to keep the sweet voice with an aggressive message.
I eventually shifted to video. Video opened up new conditions, or freed me from old conditions.
I'm still useful in my capacity as an arts educator and caretaker for the stray dogs.
My art practice eventually arrived at a point where I had freedom from various limiting conditions; the institutional mindset is not airtight and isn't altogether ideologically programmed. There are ways of escaping.
In academic circles, especially, I was criticized for lacking morals, values, and ethics. I'm feeding that angry feminist reading of my work.
Thai society rarely attempts to control literature in the same way that it vigilantly polices visual art. It's ironic because people in this society are more aware of literature than they are of art.
It's surprising that readers don't see challenging writing as morally hazardous, when it might be pushing the same kinds of boundaries as art does.
In shows where the audience wants to try to understand the work, the work is placed in a space of possibility where it becomes a subject of inquiry rather than being subject to conclusive interpretations. This is the gift I receive when I go abroad.
It is interesting to ask why people who come to view art suddenly posture themselves as full of righteousness. It's as if my artwork suddenly lends a higher moral ground to everyone else in the Thai art world.
When I began making art, I just thought I liked it. As a woman who was placed in spaces with various conditions, conventions, and restrictions on self-expression, turning to art - whether visual art, writing novels, or writing articles - was to gain freedom from the space around me.
I probably sensed the serious formality of the ceremonies and felt what others were feeling then. Looking back, I'd guess that it had opened up a gaping hole in my psyche. In the process of creating art, I might be trying to fill that hole, or to reduce its depth, or to make it feel less hollow. I think that making art could have helped from that moment on.
There might just be a universal expectation to respect the dead, but my work is also born from another aspect of Thai society - that is, the overemphasis on familial bonds.
I extol life so much that I cannot make art.
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