ART & DESIGN ARTSCAPE From left: artist and Chiang Mai University lecturer Thasnai Sethaseree; the tranquil surrounds of The Land, an artists’ residence just outside the city The city has become a nexus of Southeast Asia’s artistic vanguard, drawing gallerists, curators, and scene-makers from abroad Rawanchaikul,” he said. “He’s one of the reasons I’m in Chiang Mai.” An occasional collaborator with the peripatetic Tiravanija, Rawanchaikul frequently explores cultural identity in large-scale paintings, sculpture and performance. We would come across his work later. Thailand’s best-known artist, Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires (his father was a diplomat) and spent part of his childhood in Bangkok but now splits his time between New York City, Berlin and Chiang Mai. The puckish 57-year-old, an inveterate scenebuilder, became a major figure in the art world starting in 1990, when he confounded and charmed critics by converting a New York art gallery into a kitchen where he served rice and Thai curry for free. (Still his most famous work, the performance was later recreated at the Museum of Modern Art.) Since then, whether replicating his East Village walkup apartment in London’s Serpentine Gallery (2005) or installing a hidden ceremonial teahouse in a bamboo maze on the roof of Singapore’s National Gallery (2018), Tiravanija’s work has tended to involve communal food-related happenings in public spaces. As The New Yorker’s Calvin Tomkins once wrote, Tiravanija “not only welcomes but depends on [a] collaborative embrace between artist and spectator”. Artists in Chiang Mai, long known as Thailand’s creative capital, have been churning out exquisite statuary, textiles, and other artefacts since its days as the royal seat of the Lan Na kingdom (1259- 1588). More recently the city has become a nexus of Southeast Asia’s artistic vanguard, drawing gallerists, curators, and scenemakers from abroad. Eleven years ago Tiravanija was one. After deciding to move back to Thailand, he chose Chiang Mai, not Bangkok, in part because of what it lacked – the infrastructure surrounding an artistic scene – and what that brought out in the artists. “There were few, if any, galleries or museums here,” he said. “So artists showed or made art wherever they could.” That ethos has survived the arrival of money, names and attention from abroad. 58 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
Inside the community-minded Gallery Seescape; right: Khao soi at Howie’s HomeStay (Last year The New York Times anointed Chiang Mai a must-see destination, citing “an avalanche of art”.) After picking up a few things at the market, we hopped into Tiravanija’s car, crossed the Ping River, and headed for Nimman, a buzzy neighbourhood filled with galleries, cafes and boutique hotels. At Gallery Seescape, a community-minded creative hub, I downed a flat white and took in the indie vibe before jumping in the car again. Our next destination, on the outskirts of the city, was the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, which opened two summers ago to glowing reviews. Thailand’s first exclusive showcase for contemporary art (and its only private museum), maiiam was founded by Jean Michel Beurdeley, a French gallerist, and his late wife, Patsri Bunnag, owners of one of Thailand’s premier art collections. Together with Bunnag’s son, Eric Bunnag Booth, they renovated a former warehouse now clad in mirror tiles and made it into the bejewelled flagship for Chiang Mai’s art scene. Inside are two floors of minimalist exhibition spaces and more than 600 works, one of which is a triptych by Navin Rawanchaikul, the artist whose work we’d seen hanging in the market that Tiravanija had stopped to point out. Rawanchaikul represented Thailand at the 54th Venice Biennale and has had solo shows at New York’s MoMA PS1 and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The massive triptych reimagines Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana using the faces of Thai artists, including Tiravanija’s. “Here I am,” he said, pointing at the canvas. “And here is Kamin.” That would be Kamin Lertchaiprasert, a Chiang Mai artist whose work is now in the Guggenheim in New York and has been featured at the Venice Biennale. We would shortly run into him in the museum’s cafe. (“This is what it’s like in Chiang Mai,” said Tiravanija after introducing us. “You bump into people, but unlike New York, there is time for each other.”) Lertchaiprasert was on his way to The Land, a project he and Tiravanija founded outside the city, and we followed him. The Land, which appears to be an abandoned utopian village reframed as an outdoor art project, was founded in the mid-1990s when Tiravanija, after establishing himself in the US, started spending time in Chiang Mai. “I was surprised by the energy of the artistic scene,” he said. At the time it was winter, Chiang Mai was cold, “and people would make a fire, and everyone would sit around asking questions and debating philosophy and art”. When he and Lertchai prasert bought the property, it consisted of working rice fields and patches of farmland. Over the years, while CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 59
