How a Landmark Show by LGBTQ Artists in Thailand Is Sowing the Seeds of Tolerance Across the Region

The Bangkok Art and Culture Center in Thailand has opened a
historic exhibition of LGBTQ-themed art. On view through March
2020, the show is the largest-ever survey of regional
contemporary art that engages with the history of the LGBTQ
community in Southeast Asia.

Curated by a team led by Chatvichai Promadhattavedi, the
exhibition emphasizes shifting social frameworks and challenges to
established norms, while promoting tolerance and conversations
that are sometimes taboo in the region. It presents works by more
than 50 artists from Thailand, India, and China, many of whom
identify as LGBTQ.

“For the wider region, our neighbors in Southeast Asia will see
that Bangkok is doing a major art exhibition on the LGBT
theme, signifying its acceptance,” Promadhattavedi tells
Artnet News. “Hopefully, our neighbors might then consider it safe
for them to venture into it, too.”

Thailand is considered to have a higher level of tolerance for
the LGBTQ community than many other Asian countries. Yet while
Bangkok is recognized as a generally gay-friendly
city, exclusionary practices and discrimination are not
uncommon.

The curator hopes that governments will recognize that the
tourism, banking, and finance industries could be boosted by the
projection of a “reasonable and tolerant” international image.
Since the exhibition opened on November 23, it has received nearly
6,000 visitors, including those coming from schools.

The exhibition, titled “Spectrosynthesis II—Exposure of
Tolerance: LGBTQ in Southeast Asia,” is making its second stop on a tour that began at the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Taipei in 2017. It is sponsored by the
Sunpride Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting the
creative history of the LGBTQ community.

“I look forward to seeing how the exhibition will encourage
greater discussion and foster a more equitable world for the LGBTQ
community and their allies,” the foundation’s executive director,
Patrick Sun, said in a statement.

The show includes new commissions from artists such as Balbir
Krishan, David Medalla, Arin Rungjang, Anne Samat, and Chov
Theanly, which are on view alongside works by Danh Vō, Ren Hang,
and Dinh Q. Lê.

One of the works on view, by the Thai artist Jakkai Siributr,
features three large-scale textile works patterned with geometric
motifs that play on the pink triangles used by the Nazi party to
identify and shame “homosexuals.” The symbols in Siributr’s
Quilt Project (2019) have since been reclaimed by the gay
community as a symbol of pride.

Meanwhile, Arin Rungjang, who represented Thailand in the 2013
Venice Biennale, is presenting a new video installation inspired by
his childhood fascination with a transsexual acquaintance.

See installation views of the exhibition below.

“Spectrosynthesis II—Exposure of Tolerance: LGBTQ in
Southeast Asia” is on view at the Bangkok Art and Culture
Center in Thailand through March 1, 2020.

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Sowing the Seeds of Tolerance Across the Region appeared first
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