The stories of marginalised labourers are portrayed through art during "Crossing The Lines", which is running at SAC Gallery, until July 16.
On display are art pieces by six Thai women and queer contemporary artists who weave their stories that have been demarcated by different constructed "lines".
These lines include geographical lines as presented in Chinese: Place Of Diasporas (2020), an installation by Jureeporn Pedking who takes viewers into the memory scape of Chinese immigrants of the early Rattanakosin era and Samak Kosem's collection of works on Shan state male sex workers in Chiang Mai.
Apart from transgressing nation-state borders, Duangtawan Sirikoon's photo series of Nannies (2022) takes us into the lives of women who travel to Bangkok and negotiate their sense of self within someone else's space while Yosita Phanicharoen's installation, Homemaker Creed (2020), lends us an affective lens into the lives of women who have been coerced into the roles of just a wife and mother. The question of enforced social roles is also similar to what arises in the photo collection titled JesuisEda (2018) by Phanlert Sriphrom, the one and only transgender artist in the group, who picks on the exclusivity of monkhood, which is only open to cis-males despite the fact that the only veil that divides laymen from spirituality is the robe.
The exhibition takes a bow at Sasapin Siriwanij's performance piece, A Bloody Business (2022), which asks viewers to speculate how unfair it is for labourers with periods to shoulder pink tax when the cost of living does not reconcile with minimum wage.
Throughout the exhibition, viewers are asked to transcend the lines of race, geographical borders, gender, and class to arrive at a space where we are all in solidarity.
SAC Gallery is on Sukhumvit 39 and opens Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm.
Visit sac.gallery.
