Press Release: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

New Works: 98.4
11.15.98

THE INTERNATIONAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

New Works: 98.4

Teresita Fern‡ndez, NEW YORK, NY

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

Angel Rodr’guez-D’az, SAN ANTONIO, TX

Exhibition: December 11, 1998 ?nuary 17, 1999

Opening: Thursday, December 10, 1998, 6:30-8:30 PM

Artist Dialogue: Friday, December 11, 1998 at 6:30 PM

ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art | San Antonio presents New Works:
98.4, a series of installations by the current participants of our International Artist-in-
Residence Program. Teresita Fern‡ndez, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Angel
Rodr’guez-D’az were selected by the March 1996 IAIR Program Panel consisting of
Elizabeth Armstrong, David Avalos, Dana Friis-Hansen, Thelma Golden and Maaretta
Jaukkuri. An opening celebration will take place on Thursday, December 10 at 6:30 PM,
and the following evening, Hamza Walker, Director of Education at The Renaissance
Society at The University of Chicago, will moderate an artist dialogue.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

Born in 1957 in Trad, Thailand, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook lives and works in Chiang
Mai, Thailand, where she is on the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University. She
holds a M.F.A. in Graphic Arts from Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Throughout the 1990s, Rasdjarmrearnsook has shown widely, including solo exhibitions
at the National Gallery and Goethe Institute in Bangkok, Thailand and Atelier Forsthaus
in Gifhorn, Germany. She has been included in a number of major international
exhibitions, including the 10th Biennial of Sydney, 1995 Johannesburg
Biennial, 1993 Asia-Pacific Triennial, and Asia Society's
Traditions/Tensions.

Rasdjarmrearnsook is one of the few women in Thailand making art in an
international context. She works across many disciplines, including painting, sculpture,
printmaking, writing, and installation. With a poetic, subtle voice, her work investigates
women's roles and identities, emotions and histories.

Rasdjarmrearnsook's project at ArtPace is her first installation incorporating video.
The artist is presenting three pieces from a series that investigates death and rituals of
mourning. Filmed inside a morgue in Thailand, the chilling, emotionally raw pieces have
an indescribable visual impact. The viewer enters a darkened gallery and approaches
large projections on the walls which show the artist walking among stacks of female
corpses and reading a traditional text in Thai about a man with many lovers written by
King Rama II (Chakgri Dynasty, 300 A.D.). The second gallery presents a more intimate
view, with one projection in the room with a single column and a chair. In the video, the
artist reads a text in which two women are talking as the camera focuses on the corpse of
a woman. The viewer passes through a darkened corridor to the final component of the
installation, with five video projectors on an almost-curved wall evoking the form of a
pond. The artist reads a dialogue between a man and a woman as videos of corpses
floating in water are projected in a fluid, graceful style.

Throughout art history artists have investigated death as subject matter, from Goya's
etchings of plagues to Warhol's paintings of electric chairs. Rasdjarmrearnsook's view of
death through ritual, prayer and the power of communication creates an especially
authentic experience, one that the viewer feels with every ounce of her body as she
moves through this powerful, transformative installation.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org