Thanet Awsinsiri
Artist(s)
Thanet Awsinsiri
copied
"L’Origine du monde" exhibition reflects Thanet’s continued interest in social interactions around the concept of obscenity, pornography and erotica.
L’Origine du monde
The exhibition title L’Origine du monde is taken from one of the most infamous artworks in the western canon, L’Origine du monde by Gustave Courbet. Courbet was commissioned to paint L’Origine du monde for a wealthy collector to add to his collection of erotic pictures. Years later, the painting passed through a series of private hands and eventually landed in the possession of a renowned French psychoanalyst, Jacque Lancan.
After he died the family donated the work to the Musee D’Orsay where the painting is on permanent display. After its arrival at Musee D’Orsay, the painting caused a lot of controversy among the public for its explicit nature. Nevertheless, the work has been openly displayed for decades and moral standards of displaying nudes in public have changed drastically, but today the work still raises troubling questions towards voyeurism and feminism. In this exhibition Awsinsiri created a phantom replica of the work, not as a painting but as a low-relief sculpture.
The exhibition also includes the video installation The Earth that incorporates footage from Bigas Luna’s 1995 short film, Lumière et compagnie. The footage depicts a woman sitting in a freshly plowed field, nursing her baby. This kind of earthy sexuality is often seen in Luna’s work. Awsinsiri juxtaposes the scene with footage of the 2016 floods in the central region of Thailand, which was greatly devastated but underrepresented in the media.
About the artist
Thanet Awsinsiri (b.1960, Thailand)
Awsinsiri is an artist and lecturer at Bangkok University and King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang. He has exhibited in Thailand and internationally, including the significant national art survey Trace of Siamese Smile: Art+Faith+Politics+Love, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Bangkok (2008), as well as regularly participating in international shows in Singapore and Malaysia. He also writes extensively on contemporary art that he shares for free on his personal Facebook page.