In October, Adelaide Festival Centre's Moving Image Program is exhibiting 'The Scale of Justice: The Scale 2' and 'Squeezers' by Kawita Vatanajyankur as part of OzAsia Festival 2018.
Kawita Vatanajyankur, The Scale of Justice: The Scale 2, moving image, 2:14 mins
Image: Kawita Vatanajyankur, The Scale of Justice: The Scale 2, moving image, (still), 2:14 mins
Backbreaking physical work has traditionally fallen to women in Thailand. This Thai Australian artist transforms her body into a variety of simple tools and machines, offering a powerful examination of the ongoing challenges of women’s everyday labour. In her videos, the artist undertakes physical experiments that playfully, yet often painfully, test her body’s limits, creating a challenge that is both compelling and perplexing to witness.
Vatanajyankur brings domestic chores and gender binaries, working conditions and social ideologies, as well as industrial processes to the fore. These research threads are distilled into a concept that presents a direct challenge to the artist: can she, symbolically and literally, become the object or tool in question? Can her body be used as an artifact?
Kawita Vatanajyankur, Squeezers, moving image, 2:36 mins
Image: Kawita Vatanajyankur, Squeezers, moving image, (still), 2:36
The repetitive and arduous tasks she performs parody a pervasive slippage between human and machine, spotlighting the forgotten body in a technologically accelerating world. Beyond this literal translation, these gestures also make visible the invisible mechanisms that govern women’s everyday labour in her birthplace of Thailand - a place where, for many, daily chores are still unassisted by machines, remaining time-consuming, physically exhausting, and often the responsibility of women.