First Thailand Biennale
Thailand’s first biennale, produced by the Office of Contemporary Arts and Culture (OCAC), the Thailand Ministry of Culture, from 2 November 2018 to 18 February 2019.
This inaugural Thailand Biennale, was a breakthrough for the contemporary art world in the country and one of the most important art events in Asia. The biennale was staged completely outdoors, with no walls or ceilings and on natural sites in Krabi. This multi-million-pound landmark project interrogated the distance between art and everyday life allowing more than 2 million visitors to ‘encounter’ art.
SITE-SPECIFICITY
Unlike conventional museum-based biennials, this First Thailand Biennale was created as one of largest outdoor exhibitions globally. It is a cutting-edge exploration driven by curatorial and artistic practices, which take a proactive attitude and a practical approach to imitate, reinterpret and extend reality. This unique platform engendered a new way of thinking, and produced new artistic strategies responding to increasing conflicts between the global and the local, the artistic and the natural, and between site-specificity and sustainability.
COLLABORATION
The site visits to Krabi were conducted not only for proposing artwork and projects in situ, and generating artist-curator discussions, but also for bridging the gap between a biennale and local communities whilst negotiating with the policies and regulations of the authorities. This biennale was only made possible through substantial collaborations with a variety of contributors in Krabi, including, local architects (Dolven), craftsman (Streitmatter-Tran), school children (Blume), folk musician (Wrånes), fisherman (Winderen), sea gypsies (Map office), gardeners (Zheng), farmers and villagers (Karga).