The Organ of Destiny
2022 - Sculpture (Sculpture)
70 x 25 cm
Pratchaya Phinthong
Pratchaya Phinthong’s work has explored the mineral and karmic economies of Laos, a country that shares language, beliefs, and a long border with his own native region of Isaan (Northeast Thailand). The most bombed nation on earth, Laos still bears the physical and mental scars of the U. S. military’s epic aerial offensive, launched largely from bases in Isaan, during the Second Indochina War. Between 1964 and 1973 the US dropped an estimated 250 million cluster bombs on Laos. As much as 30% of them remain there in the ground, waiting to explode, despite sustained transnational efforts to clear them. In a series of works called The Organ of Destiny , lead and tin from munitions are recast, scaled, and polished to resemble the mirrors used in a breakthrough treatment for phantom limb syndrome, the debilitating pain experienced by many amputees. The artist takes inspiration from Canadian campaigner Stephen Sumner, who distributes mirrors from village to village by bicycle in neighboring Cambodia, training amputees in the therapy that cured his own phantom limb pain. In a parallel play of substitutions, the ‘scorched earth’ itself becomes a fluid resource, an avatar of resilience and regrowth modeled on the vegetation it nourishes. These tropical migrations of substance and spirit may seem distant, even exotic. But as Europe reels again from an indiscriminate brutality, war of a heaviness thought to have been consigned to history, Pratchaya reminds us of the larger circuits of metamorphosis and renewal that envelop us all.
Pratchaya Phintong’s works often arise from the confrontation between different social, economic, or geographical systems. They are the result of a dialogue, and bring all their poetic forces from an almost invisible artistic gesture. From his travels, the artists collects objects, materials, and stories that he assembles in his work. He often looks at gathering forms and matters that are opposite but that complete and correspond to one another.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Robert Zhao Renhui
2014Created during Zhao Renhui’s residency at Kadist SF in 2014, Zhao Renhui began observing and cataloguing insects inspired by the scientific impulse towards exhaustive taxonomy of Sacramento-based Dr...
© » KADIST
Duane Linklater
2020silentstar, delicacy by Duane Linklater is a replica of a baby pink hoodie that the artist wore as a teenager, embellished with hand-painted elements and band patches...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Theatre Podcast: "Tiger of Malaya", Teater Ekamatra Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints October 1, 2018 Duration: 30 mins ArtsEquator’s theatre podcast host Matt Lyon is joined by guests Naeem Kapadia and Charlene Rajendran to discuss Teater Ekamatra’s Tiger of Malaya , which was written by Alfian Sa’at and directed by Mohd Fared Jainal, staged at the Drama Centre Black Box, inside the National Library Building, Singapore, from 12 to 23 September 2018...
© » KADIST
Karl Haendel
2011Haendel’s series Knights (2011) is a set of impeccably drafted, nine-foot-tall pencil drawings depicting full suits of armor...
© » KADIST
Dale Harding
2018Dale Harding’s installation Body of Objects consists of eleven sculptural works that the artist based on imagery found at sandstone sites across Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland...
© » KADIST
Zhang Kechun
2011Zhang Kechun’s photographic series The Yellow River documents the effects of modernization along the eponymous Yellow River, the second longest in Asia...
© » KADIST
Noé Martínez
2019As he investigates the forms that slavery took through different events that occurred during the sixteenth century in the Huasteca region of Mexico, Noé Martínez tells, in a non-linear narrative, the history of human trafficking in Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I (Study of Trafficking of Persons 1525–1533 I) ...
© » KADIST
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
2005The Class (2005) by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell...
© » KADIST
Jes Fan
2020The Diagram series relates broadly both to Jes Fan’s interests in body modification and gender hacking as well as the artist’s investment in destabilizing hegemonic categories such as gender, monogamy, and the classical individuated subject in favor of more creative, egalitarian, and communal modes of envisioning ourselves...