Artwork: The Dress 2013, crayon and acrylic on paper, 75 x 145 cm
Bussaraporn Thongchai was born in 1985. She grew up in a small town located along the Mekong River, in the Northeast of Thailand. She now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Thongchai completed her bachelor’s and master’s degree at the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Art, Silpakorn University, Bangkok. Bussaraporn Thongchai’s drawings, paintings and collages reveal the lived experiences of women. She takes aim at institutions and behaviours that subordinate women and reinforce gendered structures and systems of power. Basing many of her works on her own experiences of male violence and coercive control in her family and in subsequent relationships with men, her work is a powerful critique of the effects of what has come to be called toxic masculinity. Most of her early works consisted of drawing and painting, often depicting the naked body in a grotesque form. She critically examines issues of gender and systemic abuses of power in Thai society. More recently she has focused on issues such as the status of refugee women in Germany, and the horrors of sexual abuse and human trafficking.
Bussaraporn Thongchai says ‘The Dress’ evokes in symbolic form her memories of the animosity between her abusive father and her mother, whose life was devoted to caring for the family.
Why do you think the artist has drawn the female figure enveloped in a garment covered in drooping, distended breasts?
What is the visual and emotional impact of the repeated curved forms, the monochrome palette and the positioning of the tall, elongated figure in the pictorial space of the composition?
Multiple breasts have often been associated with powerful Goddess figures in the ancient world – but here they become an all-enveloping garment. How would you interpret meaning/s in this work?
Compare ‘The Dress’ with any of these works, noting differences and similarities in material practice and conceptual intention:
Louise Bourgeois, ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ – or the photograph shot for Vogue magazine showing Bourgeois wearing a latex tunic of multiple breast forms
Pinaree Sanpitak, ‘Breast Stupa Topiary’ or the installation of soft sculpture breasts, ‘Noon Nom’
Lin Tianmiao, ‘Here? Or There?’. See
https://www.luxartasia.com/2012/09/lin-tianmiao-asia-society-new-york.htmlZhen Guo, ‘Mother’ installation – see the work at
https://www.zhenguoart.com/mommahttps://www.zhenguoart.com
Think About/Discuss:
Do you think ‘The Dress’ could be considered a feminist artwork? Why/why not?
