SingartBeyond Breasts Of Steel
While Thailand’s contemporary art scene considers Pinaree Sanpitak a long time calm and understated champion of feminine concerns and aspirations within her country and beyond, this Thai artist upholds that her work is not about being female or even male: she insists that it is about being human, with strong cross-gender undertones.
Before our imaginations run riot with visions of lady-boys, let me put the record straight right now: Sanpitak is really referring to what kept her creating her iconic ‘breast stupa’ for 20 years and it involves the catalytic moment when her son was born.
That instinctive bond between mother and child corresponds as much with that between a man and a woman. And it is this focus on the relational that birthed her “Breast Works” show in Bangkok in 1994.
Since then, Sanpitak has worked with symbolic representations of this crucial constitution of womanhood in various media, repeatedly using forms that bring to our minds Buddhist architectural trademarks – namely temple stupas and even bells.
Now you may be thinking about what most Thai artists, like Montien Booma as an example, do – that is to religiously craft their art steeply in Buddhist symbolism and iconography. Yet Sanpitak consciously and consistently bucks this trend: she is primarily driven to explore the female body as a maternal vessel and mound, playfully reinventing her shape through an articulation based on her beauty, spirituality and potency – giving relevance on life, birth and humanism.
That she has explored these fundamental concepts for 20 years is driven by the fact that it takes years for ideas to seed, take root and finally settle. And through this journey of self and social exploration, Sanpitak has found refreshing inspiration to represent her ‘breast stupa’ in various media.
This sensual shape has given life to numerous canvases as paintings and drawings. There have been giant installations of comfy pink breast cushions that insidiously invite us to plunge into. She has even sculpted her mammary glands with varied fragile materials that range from textiles to flowers and wax to charcoal.
In more recent years, Sanpitak has actively sort collaborators to give her breast sculptures new leases of life: she has courted chefs the world over to fill her hollow ceramic mammeries with cuisine served at fine dining establishments. This has taken her from Bangkok’s Jim Thompson House to Le Trois restaurant in Paris.
Next, master glass-blower Silvano Signoretto from Venice in Italy was invited to produce unique breast-cloud pieces of solid yet ephemeral transparent glass works that are filled with a lustrous presence. The end result is Sanpitak’s “Quietly Solid” series – distinct glassworks that creatively juxtapose against the shimmering sheen of aluminium cumulus “Breast Clouds”.
These floor based installations encourage us to look down and appreciate them from an elevation that gives us an alternative perspective. And this play on having a different view of her ‘breast stupas’ birthed Sanpitak’s latest series of sculptures: her “Breast Stupas Topiary” comprises gigantic stainless steel sculptures that were 1st exhibited outdoors at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, The Netherlands.
They are humongous enough for us to crawl through their trellis-like legs to catch a glimpse of our own reflections while marveling at the fact that while the legs are detachable, IKEA-style, they have still been produced to great precision by a furniture company in Bangkok.
These metallic artworks move Sanpitak’s current “Cold Cuts” exhibition in Singapore away from her normally tactile, organic and handmade: they play with the idea of exactitude and of something that can hurt – reflecting that she is reaching a stage of life where she tries to take better care of things.
In animated conversation with these trellises of steel are her series of 5 new large-scale paintings of floating ovoid forms based on the shape of seeds, as well as a collection of wall-mounted stainless steel shelves designed by Tokyo-based French designer Philippe Strouvenot with recesses inspired by Sanpitak’s ‘breast stupa’ shapes.
The gallery exhibiting “Cold Cuts” thus becomes a generous space in which we can slow down and play – making its social function pivotal to the way it relates to us and so us with each other and the natural surrounding us. In such respite, Sanpitak’s resourcefulness and imagination continue to impress upon us the intimate interpretations of the female, as well as the human, psyche within contemporary society.
Rest and relax in Sanpitak’s haven in Yavuz Fine Art, at 51 Waterloo Street, #03-01, Singapore 187969 before her “Cold Cuts” exhibition ends on 23 February this year.
