BÊTES ÉTERNELLES aka. INCUBUS
year 2018---2021Chapter I : SCINTILLA (2018)
Chapter II : ANIMA (2019-2020)
Chapter III : INCUBUS (2020)
Chapter IV : GLÄSERNER MENSCH (2021)
Chapter V : BÊTES ÉTERNELLES (2021)
The first advent of photography in Thailand, in the period of King Rama III of the Chakri Dynasty (1824-1851)
, was not actually admitted because Thai elites at that time were still afraid that the making of portraits (photograph and sculpture)
could possibly shorten their life span. Until the era of King Rama IV (1851-1868), photograph and sculpture
have become vital political weapons of Thai monarchs. Since then these two objects have turned into ‘Horcrux’ in which humans
have been using to keep fragments of themselves for the pursuit of eternity.
The first portrait of Thai king was made in 1865 by a Scottish photographer, appearing as a hazy colorless picture of an old man
with bizarre costume, preserved by the technique that beautifully entitled ‘The Mirror with a Memory’ as a tribute for a powerful country
on the other side of the world. Later, the same photographer, who was working for Thai elites, also captured images of peasantry
, appearing as dusky pictures of tame figures with no light in the eyes bobbing around some murky places.
In October of 2016, the death of King Rama IX had dramatically made the landscape of Thailand become pale gloom.
In another October of the coming year, a young cadet named Pakapong Tanyakan has died from a brutal hazing ritual in a military academy.
Tanyakan Family who attended to witness an autopsy of the victim, found out that several organs including brain
, heart, stomach and bladder, were missing from that ageless body.
I began to work on this project right after the passing away of Pakapong Tanyakan, by starting from photographing heads
of a hundred students from above in black and white. Then, I kept trying to collect fragments of the statues relating to the funeral of King Rama IX
, until I found that many models of royal family sculptures are stored at the factory of Ten Essential Traditional Craftsmanship
of Fine Arts Department in Nakhon Pathom province.
The molded figures in the sculpture factory were mostly made of plaster. They were meant to be essential models for casting
, enlarging and reproducing more statues to be stationed in different public areas around the country.
This historical and political space provided me an opportunity to stare steadily with great concentration at those statues at the eye level.
From this sight, those enormous monuments that used to be majestically standing as representatives of national metaphysics
, are no longer be able to conceal the languishment that they have received after a long time of tenacious grasping for immortality.
Under the humble, yet improvident gesture of those solemn colossuses, the gorgeous frailties of variation
and power are disclosed, implicitly reminding us how charming our mortality is.
Eventually, among these still lifes, an immortal object gradually becomes animated while an intermittent breath turns into a monument morally.
November, 2021
Leipzig, Germany
HS
