Bangkok Art Biennale ‘Chaos: Calm’ reflected on the condition of the world today

Bangkok is a buzzing city that is alive at all hours, a melting pot of culture both urban and ancient. The metropolitan skyline of the city skims the clouds but the gleaming temples and ornate architecture are the jewels in Bangkok’s crown. This dichotomy was reflected in the theme of the Bangkok Art Biennale 2022’s theme—’Chaos: Calm’. These traditional Thai structures, glittering in the setting sun, are symbolic of the history of Bangkok. The biennale leverages the same cultural and architectural contrast in the landscape of the city to bring the theme to life.

Bangkok has been identified as an important location on maps as early as the 15th century when it was a small village along the Chao Phraya River. Fast forward to 1782, King Rama-I declared it the capital of the country. The iconic Grand Palace, the residence of the King, and the Wat Pho temple were built during the King’s reign. This iteration of the Bangkok Art Biennale(BAB) occupied historical spaces such as Wat Arun, Wat Pho and Wat Prayoon as well as Bangkok Art & Culture Centre, Museum Siam and Central World Mall. This approach allows the work to be accessed by an array of audiences. The curator of BAB 22-23, Prof Dr Apinan Poshyananda, told STIR: “Chaos: Calm is intentionally presented as the binary form. We wanted to reflect the condition of the world today, the condition of everyday life, of family life, as well as the political, economic, social and environmental situation that the world is facing. There’s a lot of trauma and attempts to find a solution to live a better life, a solution to stop war, a solution to love one another more. In fact, in everyday life we experience chaos and calm continuously. The intensity of chaos and intensity of calm can be reversible, so we presented this theme for the artists to interpret in their own way, and the works came out very invigorating and thought-provoking.”

The art biennale boasted a long list of renowned and well-established artists from across the globe, as well as emerging artists creating room for a diverse discourse. Dr Poshyananda elaborated saying, “As the Bangkok Art Biennale exhibition is integrated into the culture and landscape of the city, we create a gratuitous social capital resource while breaking the stiff social barriers to art appreciation”. BAB pushes its boundaries in order to reach out to broader audiences by adding an innovative element to the event—BAB Virtual Venue, which is a platform dedicated to showcasing new media artworks by nine artists, based on concepts like generative AI, machine learning algorithms and virtual reality spaces. During the course of the biennale, the BAB Virtual Venue was accessible to everyone across the world online. Over the last few weeks of the biennale, the virtual art was merged into a physical venue in Bangkok. Dr Poshyananda mentioned further, “For the final month of the exhibition, Virtual Venue was seamlessly scaled to a physical location at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, so the visitors were able to navigate the space in an immersive setup allowing them to enter and experience the mesmerising virtual worlds.” BAB was also a completely free event, unlike many other biennales, making it a one-of-a-kind event for everyone to experience.

BAB was also accompanied by an exciting program of educational events, conferences and other online programs, including pre-recorded BAB Talks with the art curators and artists, like the full lecture ‘History of Long Durational Work and MAI’ by Marina Abramović, a guest speaker at the biennale who attracted many art lovers. The lecture by Abramović was moving and inspiring, with the artist re-examining iconic works in her career—with a particular emphasis on the extreme vulnerability of an artist performing complex, long-durational artworks. The BAB program was curated to be relevant and engaging for myriad communities as Dr Poshyananda explains, “For instance, Satu ≠ Padu Collaborative and housewives discussion on how their collaboration came about and on the overall experience of Muslim communities in the South of Thailand, or Tom Sachs on the inspiration behind his work Infinity, 2022, driven mainly from the exploration of different cultures, or Kawita Vatanajyankur interactive talk where the audience got to engage directly with two AI’s and democratically decide and dictate the performance.” The overall tone set by the works presented, and the calendar of talks and workshops was one of engaging community. By dispersing venues throughout the city and curating an interlaced web of sights and discussions, BAB deep-dived into the foundations of the local community.

The art biennale included a long list of exciting works on show by artists like Anthony Gormley, Gabriel Massan, Chiharu Shiota, Sarah Naqvi, Jitish Kallat and more. As we see the years go by, we also witness incredible growth in the popularity of biennales all over the world. Going forward, the direction of biennales will turn further away from what works to present and further towards examining how we can foster a sense of community while inspiring harmony through the medium of visual art. BAB officially closed on February 23, 2023, but the BAB Virtual Venue is still accessible through a virtual link.