My installation is located in Koh Klang, at a small dock of a fishermens village. Koh Klang represents, for me a meeting place between the local people and daily routines in close proximity to the bustling tourist beaches. The villagers of this Muslim community subsist from local industries such as fishing, boat building, and planting and harvesting red rice, etc. This small transit harbour with all its activity, for me represents the importance of maritime exchange in South East Asia – trading, loading, unloading, sailing away and coming ashore, pushing boundaries and overseas contact.
Responding to these surrounds, I created an installation in the small dock at Koh Klang with fishing rods installed on the railings – each rod holds a costume at the end of its line and viewers are invited to reel in what is hooked beneath the water’s surface. The costumes with wax and shells are only visible if the public is actively involved and is subject to the tide and the stream. Similarly after each viewer casts the line back in, the object is released and disappears underwater once more.
‘Silver Souls’ responds to a story I heard from the owner of a local batik factory in Krabi. She told me her ancestors began producing Batik at least 150 years ago and showed me a treasured copper stamp, her family used to make batik. In 1938 Thailand’s Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who supported fascism and nationalism, came into power and encouraged a Thai Cultural Revolution. She told me that during the Marshal Plaek era, Phibunsongkhram forbade the production of traditional batiks in his pursuit to modernize. A series of Cultural Mandates were issued and prohibited the “uncivilised” dress (batik sarong) being replaced by a western dress. The authorities forced her family to throw their stamps in the river but that night, they descended into the river in search of their batik stamps some of which she still uses today and are used in this work.
The Koh Klang inlet where the river meets the sea and the tide brings in fish and waste also reminds of what water can carry- stories and histories, treasures and secrets and things we can only ever partially understand before they decompose.