Nakrob
MOONMANAS

All the poetry and the pity of the scene, 2023
single-channel video, 4min 40sec

Still life with “The English Governess at the Siamese Court” by Anna Leonowens, 2023 digital collage printed on stainless steel,

“This place is empty for me. I don’t belong here. But there I was the light”

"All the poetry and the pity of the scene" is an interdisciplinary project that combines literature, history, and visual elements to challenge mainstream perceptions of historical narratives. Specifically, the project intertwines literary references from two memoirs, “The English Governess at the Siamese Court” (1870) and “All they could do to us” (2019), written 150 years apart by two female writers: Anna Harriette Leonowens and Prontip Mankhong respectively – each memoir sharing notions of confinement within Thai culture, especially from a female perspective. The former book is, in fact, an account of a western foreigner closely connected to the Thai Royal court of King Rama IV and therefore exposed to a secluded reality. The second is a book written by a young Thai woman as she served a 2-year sentence for enacting a play deemed sensitive to the lèse-majesté law. In the video and 2-dimensional works of this installation All the poetry and the pity of the scene, the two writers enter in a fictional conversation among themselves enacted by the artist by digitally combining archival and historical images along with selected excerpts from the books.

By blending the stories of the two protagonists into a singular narration, the works on one hand question the conventional temporal linearity of historical storytelling, while on the other create the space for an alternative narrative, thus disrupting the mainstream historical discourse. (text by: Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani )

Agan Harahap, Budi Agung Kuswara, Miti Ruangkritya, Nakrob Moonmanas, Naraphat Sakarthornsap, and Victoria Kosasie
Curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani

Mizuma Gallery Singapore