Taking on a range of new discursive forms in the exhibition, the breast-stupa is reoriented to elicit various responses, suggesting the openness of an alms bowl in one iteration and gender ambiguity in another. Resisting linear references to femininity, motherhood and religion, Sanpitak seeks to draw viewers into sensorial and affective relations with her work. The repetition of motifs on view is generative and expansive, locating wider, universal cultural referents that complicate narrow interpretations of deceptively familiar imagery.
“Fragmented Bodies: The Personal and The Public” suggests a constant negotiation and reconciliation between the self, cultural conditions and the environment, enabling contingency and fluidity to surface in the tracing of territories on both personal and planetary scales. Creating empathetic gestures in response to the vagaries of humanity and lived experiences, Sanpitak’s work brings us into deeper engagement with the world we inhabit.
Allegro Print, Singapore, 2019. Text by Tan Siuli.
