The fine art of survival

A lot of Bangkokians have been stressed out just waiting for the floodwaters to reach their districts, but those who’ve already had to abandon their homes are at a whole different level. One way to help them cope with the anxiety – and it evidently does help – is art therapy.

Chulalongkorn University art lecturer Bussakorn Binson and Gridthiya Gaweewong of the Jim Thompson Art Centre are conducting a mobile project that gets flood victims drawing and doing crafts to work off some tension.

Mobile Art Therapy got started on October 16 after a dozen volunteers – not all of them artists – responded to an appeal for helpers on Facebook.

Bussakorn showed them how the therapy part works and took them to the makeshift victims’ shelter at Thammasat University Rangsit. When it too was inundated, the therapy sessions moved along with the refugees to Rajamangala Stadium and Chula U’s Chamchuree Building 9.

The volunteers are at Chamchuree every Tuesday and Thursday, showing the folks how to draw, make cloth bags and sculpt with paper. Youngsters get a kick out of making their own toys.

“You have to design the activities to fit the group,” says Bussakorn. “We use music therapy to help the people from the Nawanakorn Industrial Estate in Ayutthaya, but we have to avoid sad songs because that gets them crying, so we use more upbeat tunes.”

Bussakorn has also devised activities aimed at fostering better relations between the generations. She’s got elderly people teaching their grandkids how to make bags.

And the volunteers are showing people how to make models of the houses and farms they’ve lost to the floods, in the form of 3D models, complete with trees, boats and tiny inhabitants.

After visiting the deluged area in Minburi’s Khlong Sam Wa district on Friday, Bussakorn and her team decided to “commission” a floating installation.

“Our mobile unit reaches victims who are really suffering – actually living in the floodwater,” she says. “They’re so depressed. We’ve asked them to create art from recycled items like foam boxes and write about their feelings right on the boxes.”

The collection of art – bearing the emotions of a swallowed community – will be set floating down the Sam Wa Canal next week.

At Wat Tai in Kanchanaburi’s Muang district, evacuees enjoyed making krathong from natural objects they collected around their villages. The art-therapy team realised that participating in the annual festival of appeasement for the spirits of the water would be a good way for the victims to get over their loss.

Leading the unit there is young artist Niwat Manatpiyalert, who came home to Kanchanaburi after his apartment in Rangsit was flooded a month ago.

He first helped in the art-therapy sessions at Thammasat. Now Niwat has joined fellow artist Montri Toemsombat – who’s been in Kanchanaburi for several months running an art project at Wat Tai. It’s currently a shelter for more than 300 people, mostly evacuated from Thonburi’s Thawee Watthana district.

Rajamangala Stadium has housed more than 1,000 flood victims for nearly a month. At least 30 kids enjoy getting creative with paper with the volunteer artists and designers of a group called Art for Help.

Art for Help’s activities are augmented by “Muang Jom Nam” (“Let’s Panic”), continuing at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre until late January. The exhibition offers both suggestions for surviving the crisis and ways to avoid another one in the future.

Led by Bangkok University Assistant Professor Sansern Milindasuta, who helped curate the show, Art for Help focuses on relaxing and entertaining people in an educational way.

“It was like a nursery at first, taking care of children from three to 14,” Sansern says. It wasn’t really art therapy to begin with, but once the youngsters had broken the ice, they start expressing themselves. Their drawings reflect their inner feelings.

A four-year-old girl sketches out her family members – father, brother, grandmother and deceased mum. Hers and other drawings, displayed on a wall, are all about fond recollections and hope for the future.

Coloured paper is carved into the shapes of bananas, apples and oranges in the Fruit Project, the brainchild of artist Wit Pimkanchanapong. It takes considerable patience, but that’s part of the therapy.

Wit plans to take his project to relief shelters in Pattaya as well.

For Loy Krathong, the volunteer leader told his “students” to use their imagination as they drew pictures of krathong on white sheets of paper. “You have to create the river to float them on,” he said, “and whatever you think should be in the river, draw that too.”

Thirty minutes later, the children’s pages were teeming with turtles, fish, flowers and, yes, crocodiles as well. Told to write down their wishes, one boy wrote, “I want Bt1 million, a big house and a car.”

“I want food and clothes!” a little girl decided.

BKK Arthouse Gallery director Bow Wasinondh has been volunteering her time for the past month and says she’s learning along with the flood refugees. “This is therapy for me too!”

YOU CAN HELP
<< Mobile Art Therapy is hoping more people can spare time to help with its floating installations, along with stationery, money and other items. Call (084) 018 0141.
<< Art for Help needs helpers over 17 years old.
<< The exhibitions “Muang Jom Nam” (“Let’s Panic”) and “Survive” have been extended through January 29 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Find out more at
(02) 214 6630 or “baccpage” on Facebook.