Thai art gets fattening

Amused Italians and visitors of other nationalities got a little gooey making thong yod – Thailand’s sweet “golden teardrops” at the opening of the Thai Pavilion at the Venice Biennale on Thursday. It wasn’t at all what they expected to be doing at the famous art congregation, but it was fun.

Arin Rungjang and Wasingburee Supanichvoraparch also had them wrapping yarn around bricks as part of the exhibition “Poperomia/Golden Teardrop”, at the pavilion housed in an abandoned warehouse in the Venice suburb of Santa Croce. 

Above them glittered a chandelier made of thousands of bronze “teardrops”, echoing the venerable Portuguese-Thai “golden teardrop” dessert, while a fibreglass buffalo surveyed the scene.

Thailand is among 88 nations participating in the 55th Biennale. The Culture Ministry’s Office of Contemporary Art and Culture – dictating a concept for the first time – wanted a “Thai cuisine” theme to bolster ambitions of making Thailand “the World’s Kitchen”.

So Arin and curator Worathep Akkabootara dreamed up the golden teardrops along with a history of sugarcane and Siamese craftsmanship so that everything fit in with the Biennale’s overall theme “Encyclopaedic Palace”. Arin forged the teardrop-shaped chandelier from 2,000 pieces of bronze and made a 30-minute video explaining that thong yod derives from the ovos moles that Portuguese settlers in Ayutthaya whipped up as snacks in the 17th century.

The video shows a Japanese woman in modern-day Ayutthaya making thong yod and Thai goldsmiths sculpting the bronze teardrops. 

Meanwhile, for “Poperomia”, Wasingburee and co-curator Penwadee Nophaket Manont imported more than 5,000 red ceramic bricks made in the traditional manner at his factory in Ratchaburi. Visitors are invited to wrap them in colourful yarn while watching a semi-documentary video about Tong Pan, whose livelihood was threatened by construction of the Pa-Mong Dam in the Northeast.

Ratchaburi residents pre-wrapped some of the bricks, the yarn symbolising modern pop trends that encircle the old traditions of weaving and brick-making. The fibreglass sculpture of a water buffalo represents Thailand’s continued reliance on farming.

 

 

WHEN IN ITALY

>>The Venice Biennale runs until November 23.

>>The Thai Pavilion is opposite the Venice Railway Station.

>>Get more details from “ThaiPavilion2013” on Facebook or check www.LaBiennale.org.