ART & DESIGN ARTSCAPE From top: the artist Kamin Lertchaiprasert; a golden skull dominates the one-person meditation chamber at the the 31st Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit a Russian doll, only the museum itself was Lertchaiprasert’s head, and within each head was another that he asked the viewer to fill. In the last – a meditation room for one person, Lertchaiprasert explained – I found a massive golden skull. The next morning I was met by Thasnai Sethaseree, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University’s Department of Media Arts and Design. Last year Sethaseree, without official permission, took over his department’s building and covered its walls with large-scale paper works inspired by a traditional Thai paper-cutting technique. The layers include decorative patterns “This is what it’s like in Chiang Mai. You bump into people, but unlike New York, there is time for each other” CHIANG MAI CHECKLIST Essentials for a visit to Thailand’s art hub ART AND EXPERIENCES The Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai ( fourseasons .com) offers bespoke tours of the city’s cultural riches, from indie showcases like Gallery Seescape (gallery seescape.co) to the institutional depth and dazzle of MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum (maiiam.com). For visits to The Land, email theland@ thelandfoundation.org. EAT Twenty minutes outside the city but worth the drive, Huen Jai Yong ( $ 65 Moo 4, Thambon Buak Khang) serves regional standbys in an often-packed traditional Thai house. For a more intimate experience, try Puang Thong ( $ Chang Klan Road), run by a mother-daughter team. continuing to share the 1.2ha site with local farmers, they reinvented it as a commune centred on artistic experimentation as well as an off-the-grid refuge for visiting artists, such as a Danish collective that attempted to turn water-buffalo dung into cooking gas. Their broken-down generator now functions as a kind of site-specific sculpture. From the Land, Lertchaiprasert drove me along dirt roads to the 31st Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit, a series of galleries made of shipping containers that displays his sculpture and paintings. (Viewed from the air, the containers form the number 31.) Entering the containers felt a bit like opening STAY Besides the Four Seasons, visitors can stay at Rachamankha (rachamankha. com), a boutique hotel quietly sequestered in the walled heart of old Chiang Mai. Outside the city lies Howie’s HomeStay (howieshomestay. com), an art- and antiquesfilled private estate designed by legendary hotelier Bill Bensley. imposed on archival photographs – some portray political violence, others scientific diagrams of tumours – on top of stretched Buddhist monks’ robes. Layering is also at play in the work of Udomsak Krisanamis, an artist whose small atelier we visited. Although welcoming, Krisanamis is renowned for not speaking about his work, which seemed unnecessary anyway as I wandered through his studio, which was cluttered with paintings the artist was preparing for a show with his longtime dealer, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York City. “I think it’s better when people discover the artists here,” said Tiravanija when I met him that evening at Yongyang, a restaurant next to a home he built here in 2008. (“I gave the owner the land,” he grinned, “and in exchange I get to eat here for free.”) Krisanamis was there too, as was Sethaseree. “I encourage the curators and collectors I know to come to Chiang Mai, to see the artists in context.” As we dug into bowls of northern-style noodles loaded with greens and pork, I looked around our table – the only one in the restaurant – and had the feeling I was in a performance orchestrated by Tiravanija. It was delicious. 60 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS
CENTURION IN FOCUS Property Times THE LOWDOWN ON REAL ESTATE AROUND THE WORLD: WHAT’S HOT, WHERE TO LOOK AND WHEN TO INVEST SYBARITIC STYLE The High Life From Miami and Monaco to Singapore and Sydney there is a greater choice of fine apartments and penthouses as well as a new crop of luxe apartments than at any time this century. Plus, as Peter Swain reports, some eye-catching villas that make for one-of-a-kind holiday residences A lavish eyrie that forms part of the Four Seasons Private Residences, Anguilla CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 61
