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With equal parts ferocity, sensitivity and humour, Kawita Vatanajyankur uses her own body to question the systems we so diligently abide by. Rose of Sharon Leake writes. 

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How should a woman behave? What should she wear, what should she do, how should she speak, and when? These questions have plagued Kawita Vatanajyankur her entire life. As a Thai-Australian woman growing up between the two countries, Kawita admits she felt like an alien to both cultures. While encouraged to speak up in class as a student at Westbourne Grammar School in Truganina, Victoria, her return to Thailand after 11 years in Australia was met with judgement. “In Thailand,” she tells me, “my personal values were re-constructed by society’s perception of what women ‘should be’ and how they ‘shall behave’. I learnt that my opinions and expressions were viewed as stubborn and rebellious. It was a truly exhausting period growing again as an accepted woman in Thailand.”

Kawita’s art practice became an outlet to explore and critique the patriarchal society she resided in. Contorting her body into physically demanding positions, Kawita’s performance-based practice began with a focus on the roles and values of women in society, specifically the domestication of a woman’s body and mind. Early series titled Tools (2012-14) and Work Series (2015-17) looked at systems of gender-based control where the physical and mental states of women are objectified and sculpted into a mould defined by Thai society. In these works her body becomes a vacuum cleaner, a set of scales or a carrying pole; her head performs as a toilet scrub or a dish sponge; and her mouth contorts into an ice shaver or an egg holder. More recent series such as Performing Textiles (2018 -19), shown at Antidote Projects which represents Kawita in Australia, has seen the artist expand these avenues of thought, highlighting the discrimination, exploitation and violence towards lower-class Thai workers in the textile and agriculture industries. For this she distorted her body into a spinning wheel, a knitting shuttle and a dye implement. “[These works] are focussed on viewing the modern system of capitalism, a system which values profits rather than human beings,” explains Kawita. “My research experience and field trips only highlight further the failed structure of the Thai system.” 

While grounded in rich conceptual frameworks, Kawita’s practice is fervently driven by the humanness of her subjects, the humility of her materials and, above all, her family. 

The production of each and every work is a family affair: her mother is a director of her work; her brother is her videographer; and her friends are curators and research assistants. Her studio becomes wherever her subject is: under the scorching sun of industrial agriculture fields; behind the all-female textile factory doors; or within the rescue homes of victims of human trafficking. While staged within brightly lit, idealised and almost fetishized scenes, the voices of her subjects, friends and family pierce through their candy-coloured facades to bring their realities to attention. Yet there remains a sensitivity within Kawita’s treatment of these confronting subjects. “People don’t like to feel offended about their belief systems, behaviours or the fact that they have been programmed and controlled since birth by the modern industrialised system of capitalism,” she says. “The candy-colours and humorous actions make them feel comfortable, they might even laugh, until they realise that after tasting the sugar, the poisoned ugly truth surfaces.” 

The clinch point of Kawita’s work lies not in its highly aestheticised staging or its precise documentation, but rather in the physicality of her process and use of her own body. When I ask her why she uses her own body, she tells me that she wants to feel what it’s like to be treated as a machine, to transport herself into the lived realities of the factory and field workers lives. “The process of transforming myself into a tool and becoming a machine,” she says, “is putting myself within a meditative stage, to take the mind out of the body. I gained my full understanding of this when I performed Knit live with a limited timeline of 25 minutes to knit the whole fabric at the Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi. I found my whole body trapped within my own art piece; the red yarns were strapped around my eyes and strangled my neck. I could not see, could hardly breathe and the corners of my mouth started to bleed. At that very moment, I realized the true understanding of what being treated as machine is like, even if it was only a short glimpse.”

Kawita’s most recent series, Field Work 2020, sees her practice shift from speaking about gender discrimination and social class issues to the capitalist system as a whole. 

With her great grandfather as president of the Supreme Court of Thailand, grandfather as vice president and aunt as an attorney specialising in human trafficking, labour exploitation and domestic violence, Kawita grew up curious about the system of law and its role as a justice-maker and peacekeeper. 

“The more I listened to their cases, the more I questioned the structure of the system and why violence such as human trafficking, child trafficking and labour exploitation in the form of slavery are still performed, especially in my country,” she says. “So I began a journey, searching for the ugly truth behind this reality by going on field trips and interviewing the workers directly about the problems and how we might fix them.” 

While one might feel that the issues Kawita explores are too deeply ingrained in the systems of socio-political power at play to ever be reverted, the artist takes a refreshingly optimistic view. 

“I am hoping for my work to change the individual mindsets of people. It is a way to change the trend and this new trend will change the culture. Throughout history, the new trends, new mindsets and new cultures have been re-writing and re-shaping the law towards justice, equality and equity. And I hope that my work will have an ability to do that.” 

Currently in the early stages of a new series using virtual reality, Kawita’s practice continues to pierce through the visually saturated and politically fatigued world we live in to ask new questions of the structures we comfortably abide by.

Kawita Vatanajyankur is represented by Antidote Projects, Australia and Nova Contemporary, Thailand. 

Featured image: artist Kawita Vatanajyankur. Photo: Atitta Vatanajyankur. Courtesy: the artist.
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