There are More Monsoon Songs Elsewhere

There are More Monsoon Songs Elsewhere (2018) is a series of hyper-real drawings of prehistoric Ban Chiang bracelets. The original bracelets are over 3,000 years old and are housed in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The prehistoric artifacts were accidentally discovered by an American student in northeastern Thailand while researching his senior thesis during the summer of 1966. The discovery was considered a major breakthrough in Southeast Asian archeology as it predicated Southeast Asia to having an autonomous Bronze Age with its own metallurgy advancement that wasn’t tethered to neighboring countries like India and China. Even though the artifacts had already surfaced, they were given greater attention with the help of the United States government, leading to major archeological excavations and studies of the site. However this could be read as US imperialism in the Vietnam era, part of a geopolitical agenda of replacing Indochina governments with liberal democracies and suppress the influence of communism.

Along with the drawings of Ban Chiang bracelets and bangles, Huntrakul also presents a series of photographs Artifacts (2007), which he accidentally found in an old cabinet in a thrift store in Los Angeles. The photographs depict women leisurely laid on the beach in their bikinis captured by the then periodic gaze of technology and its bearer. While the identity of these women remain unclear, seen together with the prehistoric bracelets they evoke a sense of the objects’ wearer. They envision simultaneous and parallel lives of the ancient egalitarian hunter-gatherers with recent leisure-laced capitalist taxpayers.

In this exhibition Huntrakul also presents new ceramic pieces with a sculpture installation designed by Naroot Pitisongswat of Flo Furniture. Huntrakul came across Flo’s famous design Dinsor (pencil), which is structurally composed of hexagonal wood profiles that resembles pencils, a tool used for drawing that is fundamentally accessible and protean. As a crossover between the designed object and sculpture, Pitisongswat offers visions to the theater of living both inside and out. Huntrakul states of his ceramic works “I make objects to remember the lives of those around me. Clay has the potential to open up its materiality, economy, and technology of making. With hand built figurines, I want to suggest that information and empathy can be realized through represented touch.”