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Transnationalism and its Limits: Mobility and Contemporaneity in Thai Art with David Teh

22 jun 2017
Public talk
Tate Modern, London.

Join us on Thursday 22 June for a seminar with David Teh hosted by Tate Research Centre: Asia. This seminar, entitled ‘Transnationalism and its Limits’ and produced in association with Afterall, will consider the position of artistic mobility within and beyond the contemporary art of Thailand.

Sunthorn Meesri, bot bat sommut (role), 1993. Performance at Tha Pae Gate, Chiang Mai as part of the second Chiang Mai Social Installation. Courtesy Uthit Atimana and Gridthiya Gaweewong.

Despite the decades-long national struggles over sovereign insecurity, economic boom and bust and constitutional meltdown, since the 1990s many Thai artists have downplayed their identity and become conspicuously mobile. What can be said of their relationship to national identity and what can their excursions tell us about the transnationalism of contemporary art? In his contribution to this event, David Teh will argue that their mobility not only allows them to dodge local limitations it also recalls a much older spatial imaginary, a worldliness that is no symptom of art’s globalisation but a condition of its possibility.

David Teh is the co-editor and lead author of the ninth book in Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series, which will take Chiang Mai Social Installation (1992–98) as a critical focus. His contribution to this seminar will be followed by a response from May Adadol Ingawanij, opening to questions chaired by Lucy Steeds.

Transnationalism and its Limits: Mobility and Contemporaneity in Thai Art
Thursday 22 June, 16:00–18:00
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

This event is free to attend but tickets must be booked in advance. To do this, and for further information, please visit the Tate website.