Open Studio with artists Arnont Nongyao and Piyarat Piyapongwiwat

Sunday 2 August 2015, 6-8pm
In Khmer and English translation
Sa Sa Art Projects #26-28 E2, the White Building, Sothearos Blvd.

Sa Sa Art Projects' Pisaot artists-in-residence Arnont Nongyao and Piyarat Piyapongwiwat and will open their studio sharing their work and research in Phnom Penh from the past four weeks.

Centered on the concept of vibration as a form of life and communication, Arnont Nongyao draws on sonic and noise experiences he exchanged with the residents of the White Building and with Phnom Penh city. With “sound inventor” Khvay Leung—a self-taught watch-maker and electrician—Arnont ran a sound workshop with students at the White Building, during which they visited their neighbours from door to door and recorded sounds. The sounds collected were continuously compressed and overlaid on each other, and then played through a bicycle-mounted loudspeaker, as the students moved it throughout the Building and eventually into the street. At this Open Studio event, Arnont will project the video and sound from that earlier workshop onto a circular screen of metallic patches, made from old CDs donated to him by the White Building residents.

If the notion of collage in Arnont’s work is based on everyday vibration and noise from a specific community in Phnom Penh, then Piyarat Piyapongwiwat considers collage more broadly as a process for connecting individual experiences within a larger network of globalised economics. Extending on her previous work on the garment industry in Southeast Asia, during her Pisaot residency Piyarat worked with a dozen Cambodian female garment workers to join pieces of cloth she collected from a Special Economic Zone in Mae Sot, Thailand, near the border of Burma. The collectively stitched fabric takes shape as a blanket, while also evoking an aerial view of the industrialised landscape. Together with this participatory textile work, Piyarat will also show a two-channel video: one channel presents thousands of Cambodian workers pouring out from a garment factory at the end of their day shift, in contrast to another channel of workers riding on a remork, venturing on a journey to an as-yet unknown destination.

About the artists

Arnont Nongyao (b. 1979, Bangkok, Thailand) works with various media including sound, video, and installation, often in site-specific and public spaces. His practice with sound centers on exploring modes of listening and hearing as a social situation and an exercise of influence, through experimentation with vibrations derived from connected things, such as human beings, objects and society. Arnont is Co-Director of Chiang Mai Collective (CMC), an open network of innovative sound artists and practitioners in Chiang Mai. Arnont holds a BFA from Chiang Mai University.

Selected solo exhibitions include TRANCE (2014) with Piyarat Piyapongwiwat, Gallery VER, Bangkok; and Imaginarium (2011), Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai. Selected recent group exhibitions include 16th Media Art Biennale WRO 2015, Wroclaw, Poland; Papay Gyro Nights Art Festival 2015, Hong Kong; The Spirit Of The Land (2014), Rumpueng Community Art Space, Chiang Mai; and Mica International Film Festival 2014, Manaus, Brazil. More about Arnont Nongyao at www.arnontnongyao.com.

Piyarat Piyapongwiwat (b. 1977, Phrae, Thailand) works with various media including video, photography, text, sound, and installation. Her work usually reflects surrounding experiences, including questioning of contemporary issues such as gender, marginalized communities, subcultures, cultural change and globalization, informed by the fields of humanities, social sciences, and political philosophy. Piyarat holds a BA from RMIT University, Australia and a BFA from Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Montpellier Agglomération (ESBAMA), France.

Selected solo exhibitions include TRANCE (2014) with Arnont Nongyao, Gallery VER, Bangkok; and Queerness (2012), Toot Yung Gallery, Bangkok. Recent group exhibitions include 7th Yangon Photo Festival (2015), French Institute, Yangon; Swimming in Sand, Growing Rice Under an Umbrella (2014), No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne; RADIATION: Art and Queer Ideas from Bangkok and Manila (2012 & 2014), Department of Avant-Garde Clichés Gallery, Manila & Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok; and Zeitgeist (2013), SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco. More about Piyarat Piyapongwiwat at www.piyaratpiyapongwiwat.com.

Arnont Nongyao and Piyarat Piyapongwiwat's residency is supported by Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FfAI) and shared funding by the artists.