CHIANG MAI — Leading Thai photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom has been steadily curating shows at Bangkok’s Kathmandu Photo Gallery over the past couple of years, most notably exhibitions showcasing forgotten Thai photographers. However, while his own output appears to have slowed recently, the soft-spoken artist — still best known internationally for his consumerism-critiquing Pink Man series — remains a potent provocateur. A horror-movie adaptation of Macbeth that the artist produced, “Shakespeare Must Die,” was banned last April after Thailand’s film board declared that its depiction of an alternate Kingdom ruled by a megalomaniacal and murderous dictator might cause social “divisiveness.” (A court battle is pending.)
And his latest show, “Obscene,” a two-series photo exhibition that links the “masculine vices of greed and lust”— first exhibited at H Gallery Bangkok last June and now showing at its Chiang Mai branch — finds him both taking a swipe at hot-button Thai politics and stepping back from it in more inwardly-focused work.
The “greed” part in the show is the series titled “Obscene,” a set of Caravaggio-esque semi-nudes in which, to Thai audiences at least, the themes of political vanity and venality are as laid bare as the models. In Goddess of Democracy, for example, a woman clad in transparent gauze and chains holds a copy of the Thai constitution above her head in one hand, an automatic rifle in the other. The saturated reds overtly reference the ruling Pheu Thai party, while the use of a female model alludes to Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand’s current and first female prime minister.
The more introspective and less piquant “lust” segment, “Holy Machismo,” consists of semi-abstract black and white photographs of sacred Thai lingam, or phallic fertility symbols. According to Sriwanichpoom, who turned 50 last year, these deal with themes of virility and sexual insecurity and are some of his most personal works yet. “I hardly ever deal with me — I’ve always looked out, not in — but recently I have been worrying about middle age and all that comes with it,” he tells ARTINFO. “I felt I should share this feeling with other people.”
Following some early experiments with digital, both series were shot on film using a 4x5 view camera for more painterly results —“softer and richer,” he says.