How to Explain Art to a Bangkok Cock was conceptualised for the artist’s first solo show at the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art in Bangkok, Thailand in August 1985.
Cover of exhibition catalogue How to
Explain Art to a Bangkok Cock.
About the Artwork
The work and the eponymous exhibition in which it was presented addressed the entrenched
structures of Bangkok’s art world and acted as a youthful, energised provocation about the
city. Before Apinan’s show, few artists in Thailand had incorporated technological methods
into their practices, given that video cameras were not widely and cheaply available to
consumers yet.
Apinan was fascinated by the satirical potential of distorting images. For an early experiment with new media that he submitted to the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art held from May to June 1985, he used his own video camera to record the centrepiece of the work: a cheap poster of Mona Lisa bought from a street vendor. Placed inside a swimming pool, the poster appeared warped by the shimmering surface of the water. The artist has also cited the distorted images produced by the photocopy machine as an early impetus for the creation of How to Explain Art to a Bangkok Cock. In this work, intentionally imperfect copies of Mona Lisa’s image were stenciled onto crates stacked to form an asymmetrical structure.
BELOW:
Apinan Poshyananda. Still from How to Explain Art to a Bangkok Cock. 1985, remade 2019.
Painted crates and LCD monitors; Video, 5 channels, each 4:3 format, colour and sound (mono),
varying durations. Collection of National Gallery Singapore.
The version of How to Explain Art to a Bangkok Cock presented in the See Me, See You exhibition was reconstructed in 2019. In the original 1985 version of the artwork, the motif of Mona Lisa extended beyond the crates. Her image was replicated via silkscreen onto several panes of glass and photocopied onto reams of paper that cascaded from the ceiling to the floor of the exhibition space. Apinan designed these elements, which accompany the cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions scattered strategically throughout the sprawling installation, to teem with colour and movement. The riotous quality of the work was heightened by the introduction of live chicks and chickens, which had been brought in from a Sunday market and were present throughout the two-week duration of the exhibition.
Apinan was fascinated by the satirical potential of distorting images.
The video footage shown on the CRT televisions was filmed in 1985 with the artist’s student at the time, Thanet Awsinsiri, acting as an unnamed ideologue in sunglasses. Embodying a figure of authority, he sat amidst a sea of chicks, chickens and turkeys, apparently explaining the Mona Lisa to them.
These playful motifs riled the establishment at the time. Viewers speculated that the different types of live poultry symbolised different tiers of the art world in Bangkok. The artist drew a parallel between his own position as a newly minted lecturer at Chulalongkorn University and the young and impressionable undergraduate students who, like chicks, were docile and eager to learn.
About the Artist
Apinan Poshyananda (b. 1956, Thailand) is a curator and arts administrator who works with contemporary art museums in Asia, Australia, Europe and the USA. His solo video installations have been exhibited at the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art, Bangkok; Herbert Johnson Art Museum, New York and National Gallery of Art, Bangkok. Previously, he served as the Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the first Bangkok Art Biennale in 2018, and Director-General to the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, and Permanent Secretary and Acting Minister to the Ministry of Culture in Thailand. Apinan holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts (Honours) in Fine Arts from Edinburgh University, and a PhD in Art History from Cornell University.
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Apinan’s art installation, featuring several wooden crates arranged and stacked in a frontal view. The crates are painted in red, blue and yellow and have illustrations of Mona Lisa.
A close-up video still showing a photo of Mona Lisa being shown to a turkey.
