Thailand channels its democratic spirit to boost Bangkok’s art scene, in spite of military rule
More than 120 years after the world saw its first biennial, in Venice, Italy, Thailand is launching not one but four international contemporary art exhibitions, eager to prove that despite the 2014 military coup, the country is back in business
It is a truth universally acknowledged that all countries need an art biennial. Thailand now has four.
It is not clear why, when the country had none before, various groups chose this year to launch their biennial. Some put it down to serendipity; others say that Thailand is keen to show the world that it is back in business after the 2014 military coup; that there is a “now or never” feeling in the air during the lull ahead of next year’s general election; or that marketing budgets swelled during the two-year mourning period for King Bhumibol Adulyadej and those controlling them are itching to invest in sponsorship of popular events amid strong economic growth.
The result is that contemporary art is being given a showing like never before in the Southeast Asian kingdom. First came the grass-roots, artists-led Bangkok Biennial, which launched in July under a radical, crowdsourcing model. In October, the Bangkok Art Biennale (or BAB, to avoid confusion) opened to great fanfare at 20 eye-catching venues across the city. Last month also saw the birth of Ghost:2561, a video-art festival with an innovative curatorial approach that will recur every three years (which makes it a triennial, technically, but comparable as an exhibition model with the others). And, finally, the Thailand Biennale has just begun in the southern resort city of Krabi – the only show that is organised by the government and with all the artworks displayed outdoors.
Cynics may point out that Thailand is catching biennial (or alternatively, biennale) fever just as the rest of the world is cooling on the idea. The fashionably sardonic complaint among the champagne-quaffing art crowd is that the world doesn’t need another biennial when there are hundreds, in all corners of the planet, already competing for attention. But the sudden flurry of activity in Thailand and the colourful personalities behind the events give insight into a can-do, democratic spirit that has flourished despite four years of military dictatorship.
Biennials took a while to catch on. In the nine decades after the city council of Venice, Italy, opened the first, La Biennale di Venezia, in 1895, only three other cities launched their own version of a non-commercial, international visual art expo held every other year: São Paulo, Brazil (1951); Sydney, Australia (1973); and Havana, Cuba (1984).
And then the concept took off. In 2015, British art theorist and biennial critic Peter Osborne counted 175 active events. This year, Anthony Gardner, head of the Ruskin School of Art, at Britain’s Oxford University, told a Hong Kong audience that a liberal estimate would put the total closer to 300.