So when Adele Tan, one of the show’s curators, told CNN, that, “The funding might be private, but its effect is set to ripple through the public domain more than if we had government money behind it,” her words seemed to suggest that the biennale intended to act-within the limits of the current political situation-in the interest of the public. After all, its funding was completely private, and much of the work was shown in commercial spaces, malls, hotels, and commercial galleries. ![]() Surely, one of the fears that must have gripped the organizers of the first Bangkok Art Biennale was that it would be seen as too closely linked to commercial concerns that the show would seem to advance private interests at the expense of the public good. Sriwan Janehattakarnkit, Nature and Normality (2018). It was “concerned with our paradoxical world of superficial happiness,” yet “its bright colors justmae us smile.” I struggled with this inconclusiveness, with the guidebook’s unwillingness to decide whether the work was critical or not, and then found myself thinking back to a black and white photograph I had seen of another work, from a different time and place, in a similar atrium. The guidebook’s description of it expressed a certain ambivalence. It was made out of colorful plastic baskets that formed a column running up the middle of the center’s atrium. Inside the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, my first experience of the Bangkok Art Biennale was Happy, Happy Project, Basket Tower (2018), by ChoiJeong Hwa. In this commercial wonderland, in the heat, in the swirl of tourists and Christmas shoppers, I briefly wondered if these elevated walkways were public or private spaces, and whether they served the public good. On the way to the first Bangkok Art Biennale’s main location in the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, this floating pavement seemed to open up in countless directions, creating paths that went in and out of malls and a world that seemed to flow seamlessly from Siam Square to Siam Discovery, from Siam Paragon to Siam Center, from Centralworld all the way to Central Embassy, with each of these malls hosting the biennale’s works, though sometimes it was difficult to distinguish between the artworks and the malls’ own promotional materials. Getting off the Skytrain at the National Stadium, one descended from the platform to one of Bangkok’s many elevated walkways, still high above the street, suspended over the city’s eternal snarling traffic jam. Choi Jeong Hwa Happy, Happy Project, Basket Tower (2018). It was seeable in three long days and ran from October 19 th 2018 to February 3 rd2019. The First Bangkok Art Biennale was a midsize show that was spread out through twenty different locations.
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