The Exhibition Arin Rungjang : Mongkut, is a part of “Enter the Stream at the Turn“, curated by Erin Gleeson for the Satellite Programme 8.
Enter the Stream at the Turn is a command disguised as a gentle metaphor. Borrowed from a longstanding Khmer proverb, it suggests one should adapt to the mainstream as a cultural code for social and political harmony. In non-democratic contexts where such a proverb remains ever relevant, where freedom of expression is politically restricted, artists often enact this proverb as a strategy of resistance. Satellite Programme 8 invites four artists – Khvay Samnang (Cambodia), Nguyen Trinh Thi (Vietnam), Arin Rungjang (Thailand), and Vandy Rattana (Cambodia) – whose channels of resistance involve the moving image realised both within and against a complex inheritance of cultural and historical occupation and censorship. Mainstream headlines, contentious current affairs, and official histories are approached as reference points for reexamination through intimate, personal narrative. Their images and narratives reach us in code, in layers, overlapping past and present, reality and fiction, fiction and documentary. In avoiding dichotomous views, a space for unknowing is offered to agitate dominant apprehensions of the subjects approached.