Whitney Biennial 2019
May 17–Oct 27, 2019
Korakrit Arunanondchai
2
Floor 5
Born 1986 in Bangkok, Thailand
Lives in New York, NY, and Bangkok, Thailand
“Will you find beauty in this sea of data?” asks Korakrit Arunanondchai, speaking in his native Thai, in with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4. The film interweaves autobiographical elements, allusions to current events in Thailand and the United States, and hypnotic postapocalyptic visions. Opening with footage of Arunanondchai’s grandmother, who has dementia, as she touches various objects in her home whose personal significance she can no longer remember, the work segues into a poetic, dreamlike montage structured around a dialogue between the artist and a personal cosmology. This is the fourth episode in a series that investigates the entanglement of spirituality, technology, nature, and memory. Throughout Arunanondchai explores these junctures to question the reliability of shared knowledge, especially in an era characterized by increasing interconnectedness.
with history in a room filled with people with funny names, 2017
Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 17-September 22, 2019). Korakrit Arunanondchai, with history in a room filled with people with funny names, 2017. Photograph by Ron Amstutz