Ota Fine Arts Shanghai is pleased to present En route: Southeast Asia, an exhibition featuring artists from Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand. The exhibition hopes to provide a window into contemporary art from Southeast Asia, where ideas of mythology, cultural traditions, heritage, identity, and history are actively interrogated.
Santi Wangchuan (b. 1988, Thailand) recalls and revitalizes the handweaving traditions of the Ubon Ratchathani province located in Northeast Thailand. Wangchuan learned how to weave from his grandmother and mother at a young age, and after studying art history, he sought to re-engage the traditional craft that is gradually disappearing with rapid urbanisation. His works are interwoven with collective memories, folk stories, religious practices and objects that are native to his hometown. Closer examinations of his sculptures, "Weaving of Memorable Space (No.5)" and "Weaving of Memorable Space (No.9)", reveal the presence of fishing baskets and antique weaving tools, reminding its audience of an old way of life in Thailand and the larger Southeast Asia.
These Southeast Asian countries — from which these artists are from — are diverse, yet bounded together geographically and historically. Some of these areas are developed and cosmopolitan, while others are more in sync with their ancestral heritage and cultures. Ota Fine Arts Shanghai hopes to offer visibility of the region's artists to our audiences, and to articulate some of the differentiated stories of Southeast Asia.
