Korakrit Arunanondchai: Sing Dance Cry Breathe | as their world collides on to the screen

Sing, Dance, Cry, Breathe | as their world collides on to the screen is the first major solo presentation by the Thai-born artist Korakrit Arunanondchai in Indonesia. The exhibition evokes a fire that exists within our collective minds—a burning process that consumes our spiritual energy and brings forth our conflicting desires for renewal and the fear of letting go. The exhibition is imagined as a theater of non-humans, embodying anthropomorphic forms through light, sound, architecture, and, finally, image.

The artworks in this exhibition span from 2018 to the present. Two symbols that are ever-present in Arunanondchai’s work, and remain significant here are the bird and the snake. Both symbols are ubiquitous in human origin myths. Arunanondchai is interested in these symbols not for their physical and allegorical manifestation as images, but more so as a set of relationships that we impose on social structures and the natural world.

Arunanondchai views his art as a form of storytelling, often to connect with and understand our collective need for narratives while also deconstructing and threatening existing tales that cease to help deal with the present. The artist longs for a fictional continuity that prioritizes human emotions and allows complex feelings to exist without a clear resolution. He often states that the feeling that drives him to create his work stems from a fear—the fear of losing something important, the fear of not knowing, and the fear of the unknown. These fears fuel his interest in both animism and science fiction.

This exhibition delves into the relationship between the ground and the sky, connected through various bodies in states of decay and becoming, all gazing downwards and praying for a new, flaming winged creature to emerge.

Korakrit Arunanondchai: Sing Dance Cry Breathe | as their world collides on to the screen will be open for the public from November 30, 2024, until April 6, 2025.