KAWITA VATANAJYANKUR
THE SCALE OF JUSTICE
The Scale of Justice, HD Video Still, 2016
In The Scale of Justice (2016), the artist becomes a traditional ‘beam scale’, balancing hanging baskets from her arms and feet. Against the jewel-coloured backdrop of sapphire pink, the baskets fill up and overflow with luscious green veg while we watch as her balance and composure are increasingly tested, her corporeal and psychological limits measured. (Text by Josephine Skinner, Stills Gallery, Australia)
The Scale of Justice is in the collection of RMIT Art Gallery (AU)
THE SCALE OF JUSTICE
The Scale of Justice, HD Video Still, 2016
In 'Machinized' Series (Sub-series within 'Work' Series)
In Machinized, Kawita Vatanajyankur is a tool, a moving part in the machine. She transforms herself into food production equipment in performance videos that restage processes such as boxing eggs and weighing leafy greens. Like her previously celebrated works, this new series is graphic and glorious, sharing the same eye-catching allure that enamors us to ads. The confronting nature of her endurance performances, however, interrupts this seductive surface.
The repetitive and arduous tasks that Vatanajyankur performs parody a pervasive slippage between human and machine, and foreground the forgotten body within a technologically accelerating world. Beyond this literal translation, these gestures also make visible the invisible mechanisms that govern women’s everyday labour in her birthplace of Thailand. In both contexts, paring seduction and confrontation proves a powerful device in Vatanajyankur’s hands—a Trojan horse for tackling entrenched attitudes toward gender, equality and work.
Edition of 4+AP