Museo Novecento On The Occasion of Florence Art Week presents Kawita Vatanajyankur - Body, Labour, Consumption

Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli

In collaboration with ThAI, Thai Art Initative and CP group

23 September – 16 October 2022

Museo Novecento Firenze

During Florence Art Week the Museo Novecento is hosting – for the first time in Florence – the work of the Thai performer and #video artist Kawita Vatanajyankur (Bangkok, 1987).

Arising from a collaboration with ThAI, Thai Art Initative and CP group, the exhibition Body, Labour, Consumption features a selection of videos from the Performing Textiles and Field Work series, which address the fashion industry and female labour in particular.

All of Vatanajyankur’s work deals with powerful political themes relating to gender, ecology and the economy of consumption, expressed through a pop idiom that is aesthetically appealing but disturbing at the same time. The artist appropriates the glossy and sensual language of advertising to highlight the inequalities and critical state of a globalized economy and to render tangible the invisible, hidden humanity that sustains the labour market. 

In her videos the artist transforms her body into an instrument (a utensil or machine) that mechanically repeats tasks, putting her physical, mental and emotional resistance to the test. Each exercise plays on a provisional equilibrium that pushes her body to the limit. Works like Spinning Wheel, Shuttle, Dye, Knit, The Scale of Injustice and The Spade, for example, stem from reflection on the international production chain of the fashion world, from New Zealand to Thailand, and ‘stage’ the activities associated with processing the raw materials and yarns. Vatanajyankur’s extremely original gaze prompts reflection on the often vulnerable and precarious conditions of male and female workers around the world, in an increasingly interconnected system of production and consumption. Her presence in Florence is an artistic #event of great importance, which takes on further significance when viewed in relation to Tuscany, traditionally associated with the fashion production chain and female labour.

Kawita Vatanajyankur         
Kawita Vatanajyankur has achieved significant recognition since graduating from RMIT University (BA, Fine Art) in 2011. In 2015 she was a Finalist in the Jaguar Asia Pacific Tech Art Prize and curated into the prestigious Thailand Eye exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, London. In 2017, her work has been curated into Islands in the Stream exhibition in Venice, Italy alongside the 57th Venice Biennale, Asia Triennale of Performing Arts at the Melbourne Arts Centre, as well as Negotiating the Future, The Asian Art Biennial Taiwan. In 2018, She showed her works as part of the Bangkok Art Biennale. In 2019, Vatanajyankur has held her largest museum show to date at Albright Knox Art Gallery in New York.  In 2021, Vatanajyankur is showing her works as part of Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories at Maiiam Museum of #contemporaryart in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Vatanajyankur has exhibited widely across Australia, as well as Asia, USA and Europe. Vatanajyankur’s work is held at the National Collection of Thailand and in Museum collections including Singapore Art Museum, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (Dunedin Art Museum), Maiiam #contemporaryart Museum, MOCA Museum of #contemporaryart (Bangkok), as well as university collections and private collections.

Kawita Vatanajyankur
Body, Labour, Consumption
Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli
In collaboration with ThAI, Thai Art Initative and CP group
23 September – 16 October 2022
Museo Novecento Firenze