Pinaree Sanpitak was born in 1961, in Bangkok Thailand.[3] She was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand and currently lives and works in Bangkok today.[3] She studied visual arts and communication design in the School of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Tsukuba, in Ibaraki, Japan earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1986.[3] During her studies at the university from 1981 to 1986, she earned the Monbusho Scholarship from the Japanese Government. In 1999, she attended Northern Territory University in Darwin, Australia for Printmaking Workshop.[3] In 2000, she attended the International Artists’ Studio Program in Stockholm, Sweden.[3] In 2001, she attended the Headlands Centre for Arts in Sausalito, California.[3]
Influences and inspirations
Pinaree Sanpitak is one of the most compelling and respected Thai artists of her generation.[3] Her work is among the most powerful explorations of women's experiences in Southeast Asia. She demonstrates an intentionally feminine sensibility to her artistic practice. Sanpitak injects Thailand's burgeoning contemporary art scene with a strong female presence.[4] Her primary inspiration is the female body, distilled to it is the most basic form of the human breast.[3] Her work is modelled after attending the University of Tsukuba in Japan and got inspired by the colourful intensity of traditional Thai art. She uses various art techniques such as painting, sculpting, drawings, culinary art, etc. to explore the female form. A central motif in her work has been the female breast.[3] The inspiration of the female breast became intensified after giving birth to her only child 21 years ago.[5] While nursing her son she became conscious of how the breast upheld itself, she has looked beyond the mother and child connection to the breast as a metaphor for womanhood and self.[5] Her most famous work are breast-shaped cushions where people can rest on and explore their sensory perception.[5]
Selected works
Hanging by a Thread (2012),[6] consists of 18 hammocks, crafted from paa-lai, multicolored cotton textile that are also used for clothing, sheets, and items of ordinary life.[7] The 18 hammocks are hung around 10th century sculpture of the Hindu god "Vishnu", which was created during the Khmer Empire. Vishnu represents the protector; meaning there would be no need to move it as it would protect the art work.[6] She crafted pieces that seem to float in to space; it is suspended in the air, which offers a sense of safety but also serve as ghostly reminders of lost lives.[6] This artwork was installed in the debut at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York, the hanging pieces were originally installed lopsided, which was not intentional, however, Sanpitak left them like that because it represented the unstable environment.[6]
Temporary Insanity (2003-2004),[8] a silk, synthetic fiber, battery, motor, propeller, sound device, dimensions variable. This was Installed at the Austin's AMOA- Arthouse, which explored the liminal space between genders while navigating between the silks of Thailand and the sands of Texas. This exhibition consists of 100 soft sculptures, and Sanpitak poetically muddles bodily forms and their associative functions. It is an arrangement of roundish cushioned objects, placed directly on the gallery floor. The objects present interactivity with the audience. They produce a soft audio effect that is mechanically derived of natural sound. "The shapes are more morphed, both breasts and balls". The effects are not only a blurring of genders, but also a blending of the human and the inanimate. Temporary Insanity recalls Buddhist practices by inviting viewers to stoop on the group, which invokes the conventional gesture of paying respect and offering prayer. The warm colour and dyed silk objects evoke both flesh and the countryside, the world recalls the palette of Buddhist pagoda frescoes and ceremonial objects.[8]
noon- nom (2001-2002),[9] organza, synthetic fibers, 55 pieces. This artwork was presented in Singapore Art Museum collection. The word "Nom" in the title translates as breast milk, which emphasizes each term's nurturing function. The work's title and form both evoke earliest instinct of nestling into the soft, fleshiness of the mother's chest in search of warmth and sustenance. noon-nom invites the visitor to not only touch the artwork, but also be touched, getting up close and personal with a familiar form that is nurturing, sensual, and sacred: the human female breast. These soft sculptures covered in organza are part of Sanpitak's ongoing and extensive body of works across different media and genre incorporating the human corpus as a vessel and mound. She questions the attitudes toward the female breast in significance as a natural form that symbolizes nourishment and comfort as well as portraying sensuous and spiritual feminine body. This artwork creates a physical and metaphorical space where participants can freely interact with tactile sculpture. noon-nom illustrates the importance of touching and feeling as a means of reconnecting human relationships.[9]
Womanly Abstract art work: Womanly Bodies (1998),[10] made with saa fiber & ratan, Womanly Echo (1998),[10] made with acrylics and pastels collage on canvas, and Womanly Slick (1998),[10] made with acrylic, pastel, ink, and charcoal on paper. These installations resemble temple stupas, and are inspired by churches. It is a metaphor; "I’m trying to put the female into a religious context, because we are so segregated". Womanly Echo and Womanly Slick have a collage overlaid in monochrome so that the Bessel is stark and hard- edged with contour lines. "Using black concentrates my work. Black represents melancholy". She believes that black is just another colour, it is not about sorrow. Womanly Bodies consisted of 25 rhythmic sculptures standing 2-½ m tall, their stitched saa fiber material gives them a coarse texture and organic distortions in their repetitious stature. The first inspection of work spears to be less sexually changed, the direct reference of this is females are seen as sex objects.[10]
Collections
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA, USA. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC, USA.Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA, USA. Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, USA. The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA, USA. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan. Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka, Japan. Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan. Earl Lu Gallery, La Salle – SIA College of the Arts, Singapore. Singapore Art Museum, Singapore. Lenzi-Morisot Foundation, Singapore – France. Bangkok University, Bangkok, Thailand. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. Misiem Yipintsoi Sculpture Garden, Thailand. Ministry of Culture, Thailand. The Queen's Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer, Bangkok, Thailand. Vehbi Koc Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey. ILHAM Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.[11][12]
Reception
Curator Jasmin Stephen says that Pinaree has engaged with notions of the self, feminism, and female experience for many years. Her approach to these issues is an expansive one, which has been shaped by her experience of showing all over the world. Stephen goes on and says "I think her works of resisting any dominating or ridged accounts of feminism while being of interest to scholars and audiences engaged in feminism throughout the world.[13] An unknown curated stated regarding Sanpitak’s Breast Stupa Cookery Project states "this process of exchange is like a rebirth; it symbolically manifests the life cycle" as the breast stupa creates are never the same or repeated.[14]
Femininity and feminism
Femininity on a Plate (Breast Stupa Cookery – 2005)[15] An adverse effect of Pinaree Sanpitak's signature work provokes hallucinating objects like boobs, whether fried eggs, bowls, lampshades etc. Sanpitak expresses her thoughts and experiences through breasts taking into culinary art. "It’s my lifetime project," says the artist, who has collaborated with cooks and chefs from many countries to express the symbol of femininity on the plate.[15] Sanpitak worked with professional and amateur chefs to create meals using specially designed breast stupa- shaped cooking molds made in glass aluminum and glazed stoneware. The artist and her collaborator-chefs have hosted many of these events, presenting their five-course nourishing nipple- meals to audiences in Thailand, Japan, China, Spain, France, and the United States.[15] "The inspiration came when I gave birth to my son. I used the breast shape, which is a beautiful form, to represent myself and also to symbolize not only motherhood but also femininity, and womanhood. There is a deeper meaning because when you look at mothers breast- feeding their child, it’s about both giving and receiving".[15] The recipes and cooking process are documented and compiled as videos and cookbooks. In August 2005, the first official Breast Stupa Cookery event took place at the Jim Thompson House, which involved four chefs in preparing a buffet banquet for 200 guests.[15] Over four years, Breast Stupa Cookery events has been organized over the world. The Breast Stupa culinary experience changes people's perceptions and make them look beyond what they see on the plate.[15]
Related Research Articles
Marie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or.
Lee Bontecou is an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Bontecou made abstract sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s and created vacuum-formed plastic fish, plants, and flower forms in the 1970s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.
Marisol Escobar, otherwise known simply as Marisol, was a Venezuelan-American sculptor born in Paris, who lived and worked in New York City. She became world-famous in the mid-1960s, but lapsed into relative obscurity within a decade. She continued to create her artworks and returned to the limelight in the early 21st century, capped by a 2014 major retrospective show organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Womanifesto an international art exchange program based in Thailand. It is a biannual artist-initiated event focusing on the work of women artists from around the world. Womanifesto has gained international recognition and developed steadily since the first event in 1995. Through various activities, including art exhibitions, workshops and seminars, Womanifesto develops networks among participating artists and encourages interaction within urban and rural communities. The initiative offers a way to rethink feminist, nation-centric, and region-centric narratives of art history.
Mariko Mori is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her photographs and videos of her hybridized future self, often presented in various guises and featuring traditional Japanese motifs. Her work often explores themes of technology, spirituality and transcendence.
Kiki Smith is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works in the Lower East Side, New York City, and the Hudson Valley, New York State.
Janine Antoni is a Bahamian–born American artist, who creates contemporary work in performance art, sculpture, and photography. Antoni's work focuses on process and the transitions between the making and finished product, often portraying feminist ideals. She emphasizes the human body in her pieces, such as her mouth, hair, eyelashes, and, through technological scanning, brain, using it as a tool of creation or as the subject of her pieces, exploring intimacy between the spectator and the artist. Her work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture.
Alison Saar is a Los Angeles, California based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion."
Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator who was known for her rounded, closed forms that viewed ceramics as a fine art and more than a functional vessel. She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.
Ruth Duckworth was a modernist sculptor who specialized in ceramics, she worked in stoneware, porcelain, and bronze. Her sculptures are mostly untitled. She is best known for Clouds over Lake Michigan, a wall sculpture.
Marietta Robusti was a Venetian painter of the Renaissance period. She was the daughter of Tintoretto and is sometimes referred to as Tintoretta.
Leo Sewell is an American "found object" artist. His assemblages of recycled material are in over 40 museums and in private collections worldwide.
H Gallery is an art gallery in Bang Rak District, Bangkok, Thailand. It is located in a beautiful 125-year-old Anglo-Thai mansion.
Tim Rollins was an American artist who together with the art collaborative K.O.S. formed the art-group Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Thavibu Gallery is an art gallery and art book publisher in Bangkok, Thailand.
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook is a Thai artist who works primarily with film and video. She currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Anita Magsaysay-Ho was a Filipina painter who specialized in Social Realism and post-Cubism in regard to women in Filipino culture. Magsaysay-Ho's work appeals to Modernism by utilizing more abstract designs and styles rather than realistic approaches. She was the only female member of the "Thirteen Moderns," a standing group of Filipino modernist artists, and in 1958 was chosen by a panel of experts as one of the six major painters of the country's history. The most famous work of Magsaysay-Ho are subject to the beauty of Filipino women dealing with everyday issues. Collections of her artwork can be found in museums around the Philippines.
Misiem Yipintsoi (1906–1988) was a prominent Thai painter and sculptor. Despite a late start to her career, she became one of Thailand's leading artists.
Korakrit Arunanondchai is a video and multimedia artist originally from Bangkok who now splits his time between Brooklyn and Bangkok. He is best known for his 2017 installation, With history in a room filled with people with funny names 4, which received widely positive reviews and was recognized with an award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Aki Inomata is a Japanese multidisciplinary contemporary artist and designer based in Tokyo. Her work addresses identity, displacement, and questioning societal boundaries between humans and animals, and the natural versus man-made world. Much of her artistic practice aims at creating collaborative interspecies relationships through contemporary modeling technologies, often with 3-D scanning and printing techniques. Inomata's cross-disciplinary Bio Art projects complicate notions of production while proposing new awareness of human and nonhuman ecologies, as she states: "The concept of my works is to get people to perceive the modes of life of various living creatures by experience a kind of empathy towards them."
References
↑ Chanasongkram, Kanokpron, "Femininity on a Plate: Prominent artist collaborates with chefs to bring out the breast in food". Bangkok Post: The world’s window to Thailand. (2009).
↑ "Pinaree Sanpitak." Pinaree Sanpitak Biography – Pinaree Sanpitakon Artnet. Artnet Worldwide Corporation, 2017. Web 13 Mar. 2017
↑ Reilly, Maura, and Saisha Grayson. "Pinaree Sanpitak: Quietly Floating." (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 1 Apr. 2017.
1 2 3 Morris, Linda. "Thai Artist Pinaree Sanpitak Embraces Female Form." The Sydney Morning Herald. The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Oct. 2014. Web 13 Mar. 2017
1 2 3 4 Li, Jennifer S, "Finding Balance: Interview with Pinaree Sanpitak". Art Asia Pacific Blog. August 12. 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2017
↑ Tewksbury, Drew, "DO: ART: Look But Don’t Nap in These Hammocks". Los Angeles Magazine. Sept 1.2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2017
↑ PINAREE SANPITAK (n.d.): n. pag. Tyler Rollins Fine Art. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
↑ "Pinaree Sanpitak." Pinaree Sanpitak Biography – Pinaree Sanpitak on Artnet. Artnet Worldwide Corporation, 2017. Web. 13 March 2017
↑ Fairley, Gina. "The Female Breast Inspires Contemporary Art." ArtsHub (n.d.): n. pag Tyler Rollins Fine Art. 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 1 Apr. 2017.
↑ Cate, Sandra. "Conversation outside the White Cube." Thai Artists, Resisting the Age of Spectacle (n.d.): n. pag. 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2017.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Chanasongkram, Kanokpron, "Femininity on a Plate: Prominent artist collaborates with chefs to bring out the breast in food". Bangkok Post: The world’s window to Thailand. 3 Apr. 2009. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
