The Irony of Dreams

THE IRONY OF DREAMS
A new exhibition questions the meanings of dreams
By: RATHSARAN SIREEKAN
Published: 28/05/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Outlook
'I dreamed that I turned blue and my sex changed; drenched, gracefully delving deep into the polluted Yamuna, I rose again, spiritually revived, from the base of a textile motif whose origin I knew not; like a blue willow branch drooping, I curved my feminised torso and transfigured it into a stag, yet with my feminine face and need for jewels intact; while roaming freely in a golden paddy field, a big golden proscenium arch fell and captured me within; suddenly I turned into a flamboyantly naked 'Venus of the modern day' keeping two bearded French gentlemen company at lunch on the grass, then a Thai farmer looked into the frame and ventured I'd ripped my clothes away because the weather was too hot!"


A work by Sheba Chhachhi at ‘Dreaming in Public’.
Indeed, in dreams, fantastic logics operate. Especially in "Dreaming in Public" - Gallery Soulflower's latest contribution to the Bangkok contemporary art scene - thoughts and identities amorphously flow, in and out, here and there. But not long before you wake up, a large golden frame drops and cages you in, and that's when you realise - as Gerard Staunton's commentary on the show has it - "we dream in company even when dreaming alone."
Dreaming in Public encapsulates this paradox. According to the curator, Brian Curtin, the show seeks to "challenge normative notions of dreaming and explore intersections with the public/collective". The group exhibition "asks how notions of both 'dreaming' and 'public' may be understood less by their juxtaposition than mutual infiltration".
Visitors are first welcomed by Jakkai Siributr's "Pendulums of Dream", as I shall dub it, whose collective swaying character, as well as his other fabric works, renders the aesthetic of the ethereal, hypnotic and dream-like. Although each of these dream amulets was coarsely embroidery-stitched to narrate very personal stories behind their symbolic meaning - the collective culture of superstition - the very attempt of ours to decode this cultural symbol "imbues public forms with personal meaning" and vice versa.
The works of Sheba Chhachhi and Hema Upadhyay, too, employ such cultural symbols - as an elephant, the Taj Mahal, Indian mythological beings and goddesses and Indian textile patterns - to address social issues in creative ways that cause you to raise your eyebrows. Indeed, in Dreaming in Public, "the imagined moves to the real; from the esoteric to the revealed; from the personal to the collective - a code to decode," said the curator.
Rendering fuzzy the boundary between public and private, Curtin's definition of dream is not confined to the nebulous realm of our innermost thoughts and feelings, but pushed to another level so as to equate the artwork itself with how we read it.
Indeed, Curtin's latest curatorial effort proffers that inasmuch as dreams are interpreted to be understood, art, too, needs such a process to make private indulgence "intelligible" - another code to decode - turning the private into the public. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's series of international encounters between French masterpieces (all, accidentally, are from the renowned Musee d'Orsay) and Thai villagers/farmers are the work in point here.
Although comments have been made about these pieces of hers being displayed elsewhere before, Curtin's problematisation of "dreaming" has enriched the context in which Araya's works are to be understood and appreciated.
As Curtin has it, "Araya's works fit the theme in terms of the intersection of private/public. The farmers' discussion of the French paintings follows the logic of dreams: Spontaneous, unlearned, wildly discursive, etc. Furthermore, Araya's video works are more broadly a consideration of the public reception/consumption of artworks: The farmers trying to decode the French artists' paintings and us decoding Araya's videos. Dreaming has to do with the imagination and imagining life differently; the farmers' interpretations have nothing to do with sanctioned meaning; this should inspire us to imagine things differently also."
However, given several functions dreams are said to have in regard to the self and its subjectivity - either as projection, distortion or wish fulfilment - theorisation such as that of Michel Foucault's "technology of the self" and the inseparability of subjectivity and subjugation poses the question of how "different" and "private" our innermost thoughts can be. After all, we ourselves are the product of a larger political-economic and cultural discourse. Araya's video work Van Gogh's The Midday Sleep and the Thai villagers (2007) succinctly addresses this nuanced point: The local Thais' decoding of the Van Gogh - as they try to make out what possible lotto numerals Van Gogh's sickles can be made out into - reveals the typical and collective economic anxiety of the Thai grass roots and how people feel, either unconsciously or consciously, pressured (by governmental rationality) they haven't done enough - apart from the concern over their personal wealth - as economic actors contributing to the nation's GDP.
Dreaming in Public is one of the best thought-out international exhibitions that Bangkok has seen in years. It shows how curatorial manoeuvring can greatly benefit contemporary art.
'Dreaming in Public' is on view at Gallery Soulflower, basement level, Silom Galleria, until July 27. Call 02-630-0032, 08-6082-1573 or 08-7030-2491 or visit http://www.gallerysoulflower.com.