Kawita Vatanajyankur: Work

Overview

One of our brightest video artists is exhibiting at Stills Gallery this month. Her latest series, titled simply Work, restages a local fruit market. The prettiness of Kawita Vatanajyankur’s art is like a packet of lollies — deliciously alluring. However, she often blends pain and humiliation with her Willy Wonka colour palette. Her work is a peculiar blend of quirkiness and body-aching intensity.

Vatanajyankur is an endurance artist; she is perpetually testing her mental and physical limits. This latest foray into smashing melons and balancing bananas also contains a feminist undercurrent. While reviving the pre-industrial labour of her native Thailand, her videos tap into traditional understandings of ‘women’s work’. You are likely to see a heightened destructiveness where she is literally being worn down by banal tasks. In any case, Vatanajyankur is one of those can’t-look-away artists.

Come along to the opening on Wednesday, May 6, at 6–8pm.