The Ancestors
MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai
Busui Ajaw, Chien-Pei Chen, Chin-Yun Kuo, En-Man Chang, Jedsada Tangtrakulwong and Pinaree Sanpitak
Curated by Kohkae Collective
Trace back to when the boundary between humans and nature was still delicate. If we deconstruct the geopolitical borders, we will find complex interconnected bonds between all living beings who occupy the same geography. Giving birth to live young, the human animal is akin to other species in the moment it enters the world. The arrival of colonization and globalization isolated humanity further from nature. Where once, human identities were woven with it. Yet nature was never a simple resource for consumption; it shaped human beliefs, histories, and institutions.
Offering glimpses of the ties that bind humans to other living beings, The Ancestors questions culture as a narrative written from only one perspective. Placing artists from MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum’s collection, Pinaree Sanpitak, Busui Ajaw, and Jedsada Tangtrakulwong in conversation with Taiwanese artists, Chien-Pei Chen, Chin-Yun Kuo, and En-Man Chang. This exhibition nurtures a dialogue which reaches across seas, and across species. Expanding notions of kinship to consider those who are not solely bound by blood, but bonded through interactions within an ecosystem at a particular time.
Visceral and vulnerable, this exhibition argues that human culture is built upon a bodily experience never distinct from the nature it exists within. Expanding the notion of where humans might belong, The Ancestors brings deep curiosity to the question;
“Where are we from?”
The Ancestors exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand and the Taiwan Ministry of Culture.
