Collaborative Projects to Build Art Platforms
Interview with Gridthiya Gaweewong
Hattori Hiroyuki, Gridthiya Gaweewong

Gridthiya Gaweewong established Project 304 with fellow artists in 1996 inBangkok. While running the space, she has collaborated with many overseas
curators and artists and contributed to the formation of art platforms in Thailand.
Therefore under the themes of “collaborative projects” and “making an artplatform,” I interviewed her mainly about her activities in the late 1990s and early
2000s and her thoughts.

Mail interview
Guest: Gridthiya Gaweewong (Artistic Director, Jim Thompson ArtCenter)
Interviewer: Hattori Hiroyuki

Gridthiya Gaweewong, 2020

Hattori Hiroyuki: I think you were involved as a member of Project 304[1], one ofthe venues for “Cities on the Move, Bangkok” (COM) held in 1999. “COM” was anexhibition that traveled around Europe and to the United States introducing Asianarchitecture, cities and contemporary arts. Do you know why this exhibition washeld in Bangkok? And could you also tell us how you were involved in thisexhibition?

1. For more on Project 304, see https://www.facebook.com/Project-304-bangkok148286781933955/, accessed Nov 8, 2020.

In addition, you’ve mentioned that, because of the lack of public museums forlarge-scale contemporary art shows in Bangkok at that time[2], various places in
the city (art spaces, streets, even vehicles) became venues. Please give us youropinion on the significance and positioning of this exhibition. Did it have any
influence on the subsequent development of contemporary art in Bangkok?

2. Gridthiya Gaweewong, “Shifting Asian Contemporary Art Networks,” International
Symposium 2015 “ THE 1990s: The Making of Art with Contemporaries” report, The Japanenter, 2016)
Foundation Asia Center Art Studies 02 (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation Asia Center,
pp.008-013.

Exterior view of Project 304

Gridthiya Gaweewong: The “Cities on the Move, Bangkok” version was initiatedand facilitated by the French Embassy, under the supervision of Francine Meoule,the cultural attaché, who was very much involved with contemporary art inEurope. She managed to connect small and major art institutions in Bangkok
successfully, especially to work with the Bangkok Metropolitan

Administration(BMA), through Kraisak Choonhavan, who served on the advisoryboard of the BMA. During that time, in the late 1990s, BMA planned to build an art
center at the Pathumwan intersection, resulted to the demand and pressure fromlocal arts community, which is now the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC).
In the 1990s, the art and cultural landscape in Bangkok was still underdevelopedin terms of infrastructure and institutions. There were few alternative spaces,
university galleries and national museums. With this landscape, it was impossiblefor Bangkok to accommodate a big show like COM in one space, so the local
curators, Ole Scheeren (a German architect who worked with Rem Koolhaas thenand served as the exhibition designer for COM in Hayward Gallery, London) andThomas Nordanstad (a Swedish curator based in Bangkok) decided to spread theexhibition across many spaces, both institutions like National Gallery, Chao Faroad, Siam Society, Asoke area, and alternative spaces like Project 304, AboutCafé and Tadu Contemporary Art, as well as public spaces like street posters,
billboards, Chao Phraya river, to name a few. Project 304 served as one of thevenues for COM, where we showed Osawa Tsuyoshi’s Nasubi Gallery, Koo Jeong
A, Hanayo, Surasi Kusolwong’s Free-For-All: Massage.

Surasi Kusolwong, Free-For-All: Massage, “Cities on the Move, Bangkok,” Project 304, 1999

The significance and the impact of COM for the local scene was quite interesting.
Even though it didn't change the scene radically, it was the first time that theseart spaces collaborated with each other. It was a phenomenal experience to seesuch a thing happen in the highly fragmented and territorial Thai art scene. But I
think artists, art spaces and independent curators like us got the most out of it.
Why? Because many young artists received international exposure from thisproject both directly and indirectly. There were many international and regional
curators and artists visiting Bangkok during that time, they did studio visits, they
connected us with the international art scene. Many artists from Thailand got
invitations to join biennales and other international shows outside of the region. It
was different from the 1990s, when the circulation of artists was still around theregion, but after that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the circulations andnetworks expanded outside of the region and spread to Europe and the US. For
me, I got a lot more projects in Europe and the US in the early 2000s.

Kamol Phaosavasdi's installation DILEMMA in collaboration with a fortuneteller, Project 304,
2001

Hattori: Three years later, you realized the Bangkok exhibition “UnderConstruction, Bangkok: Sorry for the Inconvenience.” You were the only curator
for the Thai exhibition, but please tell us how you got involved with the othercurators. Also, it was written in your essay that you visited India and China as partof the research for this exhibition. Was there any support from curators in eachcountry in the research? Please let us know if you have any learnings fromrelationships with curators in other regions.

Gridthiya: When I was invited by the Japan Foundation Asia Center to join the“Under Construction” project, it was quite amazing to see how little we knew
each other and about our neighbors' history. I was so ignorant about this, andeven about my own socio-political history. This project allowed me to explore andrelearn about my own history as well as Asian history in a contemporary regional
perspective. Actually, the Japan Foundation encouraged us to collaborate, so I

proposed to work with India and China because I wanted to retrace theconnections and history of international relationships between Thailand andmainland Southeast Asia in the pre-modern period with these two countries,
which used to be major civilizations in the past. Before the formation of thenation/state, Siam/Thailand or Lanna Kingdom where I came from, were tributestates to China, so we were involved politically with China since that period, butconceptually and culturally, in our daily life, we were highly influenced by theanimist, Brahmin, Hindu and Buddhist traditions and beliefs which derived fromthe Indianization of this region.
When I proposed this idea to my colleagues, Pi Li and Ranjit Hoskote, they didn'buy it. So I had to do it alone, but they were very helpful when I did research in t
China (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) and India (New Delhi and Mumbai). It’svery interesting to see the reaction of my colleagues because they finally workewith other Asian countries in Pi Li’s case, who worked with Japan and Korea, dwhile Ranjit Hoskote decided to work with Patrick D. Flores in Manila. However,many curators visited and researched in Thailand during the research period. I
also visited the exhibition in South Korea. So this was the best chance for us toexplore different cities and art scenes in Asia at the dawn of the 21st century.

Performance by Montri Toemsombat, Bangkok Bu alo Boy, “Under Construction, Bangkok:Sorry for the Inconvenience,” 2002

Installation by Chen Shaoxiong, Third Street, “Under Construction, Bangkok: Sorry for theInconvenience,” 2002

View of Thasnai Sethaseree, A Chinese New Year Project, “Under Construction, Bangkok:Sorry for the Inconvenience,” 2002

Gridthiya: Since it was a two to three-year project, it allowed us to learn and growwith each other. Later, many of us collaborated together on different levels andprojects both on an individual and institutional basis. At the beginning, this might
have been facilitated by the Japan Foundation or other trans-regional culturalinstitutions,but later in the late 2000s and especially in the 2010s, it was more orless through our own institutions. For example, I worked with Kim Sunjung inGwangju Biennale 2018, with Patrick D. Flores in many occasions such as foressays and lectures as well as a fellow jury member in Manila, Bangkok,Singapore, Gwangju and Seoul. Kamiya Yukie and Kataoka Mami were on thesame panel as me many times in Japan. Yamamoto visited my show inShodoshima Island, and we had a nice dinner in Osaka together. I also bumped
into Ranjit Koskote when Bergen Museum of Art held the Bergen Assembly a few
years ago. For artists, I still work with some of them on a regular basis, such as
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Montri Toemsombat, Thasnai Sethaseree. It was very
sad to see two of the Chinese artists I worked with passed away, Chen Shaoxiong
and Cui Xiuwen, while Wang Gongxing was very much alive and joyfully shared
the good news about his son who had finally graduated from Columbia University,
when we met in Japan in 2018. In retrospect, we found that the artists andcurators that we invited to join “Under Construction” was like a family. We kind ofgrew up together, and are happy to support each other.

Hattori: In the catalog of the “Under Construction” Tokyo exhibition, yousubmitted a conversation with the participating artists of the Bangkok exhibitionand others instead of your own essay. It was a very interesting approach, but
could you please tell me the intention of presenting this polyphonic conversation
rather than an essay?

Gridthiya: For the text in the catalogue, I decided to include multiple voices ofparticipating artists from Thailand, Indian and China because I felt I would like theartists’ voices to be put first. My idea was to hear them speak directly about theirown contexts and reality. With this respect, I decided not to write the essay andreflect on my subjectivities. That's why I transcribed our conversations that took
place in Bangkok during the local exhibition. The other reason was because theduration of the research was not that long, and I didn’t spend much time in eachcity and country, I felt it was impossible for me to encapsulate that kind ofreflexive experience in a single-author essay.

The essay written from the dialogue with artists by Gridthiya Gaweewong, “On Under
Construction and Localization,” excerpt from Under Construction: New Dimensions of AsianArt, catalogue, 2002

Hattori: Both “Cities on the Move” and “Under Construction”were characterizedby having multiple art spaces in Bangkok as venues. In the “Under Construction”
exhibition, you captured the problems and hopes of the Thai Art scene vividly
with humor and criticism under the title “Sorry for the Inconvenience. ” What wasyour intention in “Sorry for the Inconvenience” at that time?

Gridthiya: My intention was quite simultaneously responsive and reflexive to thereality of our urban experiences. The shifts in urban spaces happened not only inBangkok, but in major cities all over Asia, as I experienced during my research
period. They were undergoing heavy construction, so the title of my show was awarning signage as we faced these physical problems while maneuvering
ourselves through these cities. When we saw a yellow sign that said, sorry for theinconvenience, it created discomfort and disturbing sentiments in all of us,
especially in Bangkok where the traffic jam became one of the major issues for
us in daily life. That’s why I used this title to reflect the reality of ourcontemporary society, then.

The main visual of “Under Construction, Bangkok: Sorry for the Inconvenience,” 2002

Hattori: Also, is “Sorry for the Inconvenience” still a valid attitude in the current
Thai art scene? Or do you think that Thai art is now at a different stage? I thinkthat the situation surrounding art in Bangkok has changed drastically, such as theestablishment of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) in 2008, so I would be
grateful if you could give us your opinions on the changes in the environment.

Gridthiya: The question is, who would say sorry for the inconvenience now? If it’s
the state, it’s no time to say that because we are no longer in the “underconstruction” state physically. Politically maybe, yes. However, I won’t accept thisterm for now. You are right about the contemporary art situation has changed
drastically and dramatically since the late 1990s. The infrastructure of the local

──the Office ofart scene has gradually progressed since the 1990s

Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture started in the early 2000s, andlater BACC started; in the mid 2010s we witnessed the emergence of private
museums and later we saw a few biennials and triennials in Bangkok and otherprovinces. It seems like a perfect picture, but how come the Thai art scene is still
standing in the lurch? A few major problems that have held us up include
turbulent politics, national centric policy, and economic recession. This kind ofcontext has not provided the healthiest or best conditions for our art ecology togrow.

Hattori: In recent years, several biennales such as Thailand Biennale, Bangkok
Art Biennale, and Bangkok Biennial have been held in Thailand. Bangkok Biennial
are trying to use venues across the entire city and build a network of various art
spaces, but these methods seem to inherit the practice from the “Cities on theMove” exhibition. What are your thoughts on such a Biennale initiative? I would
like to hear your opinion on the current situation, such as changes anddiscoveries from the attempts of the late 1990s and early 2000s in these recent
efforts, or problems that persist.

Gridthiya: The decentralization of the biennale sites existed in both Bangkok andbeyond. The Bangkok Biennial was not the only biennale that implemented thevenue in the entire city and built networks of various art spaces, Bangkok Art
Biennale (BAB), and Ghost Festival have also used the same models. While theBAB connected with major institutions like BACC, BAB Box, temples and various
sites of real estate of the major corporations that support them (such as ThaiBev),
Ghost Festival works with independent art spaces as well. And for yourinformation, “Cities on the Move” was not the first art exhibition that used──“Chiang Mai

different spaces and public spaces to show artworks in Thailand

Social Installation” had been using this strategy since the early 1990s. However,“Cities on the Move” used this strategy out of necessity, and I guess BAB,
Bangkok Art Biennale and Ghost Festival did it because of the same reasons. It

means that there are still not enough art institutions and spaces to accommodate
major shows like other countries. On second thought, they perhaps use thisstrategy because they want to reach out to different parts of the city, and wider
audiences because of the nature of our urban landscape as well as thedemographic disparities. In the future, if we have more spaces for contemporary
art and culture, the model might be different and shift to a more institutional
approach.