Specializing in Thai & Asian Contemporary Art

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A ROOM AT THE END OF THE WORLD

H Project Space is very pleased to announce an installation by an emergent artist based between Thailand and Canada. Probing discomforting but revelatory ideas about sexuality, desire and identity, Amornthep Jaidee has recreated H Project Space as a surreal bedroom where the weird juxtaposition of found objects antagonizes the serenity and grandeur of this colonial-style room. 

New generations of artists continue to provide fresh voices for the critical theories of gender and sexuality that emerged under the rubric of post-modernism and with Queer Theory. Themes of a fragmented self, the politics of normative values, and the subversive potential of ambivalent knowledge receive renewed interest for ever-expanding contemporary contexts. A Room at The End of The World confronts us with a recognition of the fraught terms by which we often understand private, personal, experience and our sense of self therein - between seduction and repellence, desire and risk, and other confusions.

The title of this installation refers to Michael Cunningham's iconic novel of the 80s, A Room at The End of The World, which explored how a small group of individuals sought to re-imagine themselves, their identities, outside conventional structures and away from the grand political frameworks of previous generations. The title also refers to the architecture of H Project Space, a somewhat quaint symbol of history in the context of modern, metropolitan Bangkok. Both references can be understood as pursuing ideals but may be mined for their failures: the former for revealing the ultimate power of convention and the latter as an outmoded gesture. However, A Room at The End of The World reconsiders their intrinsic ambitions to imagine a space where conventional understanding and hierarchies of difference are no longer possible.

Amornthep Jaidee was born in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. He has been living in Canada for over a decade, where he received his BFA from University of Lethbridge, Alberta, and is currently completing a MFA at Concordia University in Montreal. His exhibitions include Eponymous (2012), Fuaye Galerie, Ayvalik, Turkey, Cabinet of Queer-iosities (2012), Bowman Art Center, Alberta and the solo exhibition Piggies (2010) at Ashland Gallery in Alberta. Amornthep has held residencies at the Goyang National Art Studio Gallery in Korea and the The Banff Center in Canada. 

This project is generously supported by Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Concordia University.

 

Amornthep Jaidee
July 11 - August 18 2013
Curated by Brian Curtin