Beyond the kitchen: Stories from the Thai Park
Link to VIlla Oppenheim Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Link to SAC Gallery Bangkok
In Wilmersdorf's Preußenpark, people from Asian communities meet Berlin and a tourist audience on summer weekends. Many of the women involved came to Berlin as marriage migrants from the northeast of Thailand. They trade in freshly prepared food and share their experiences of life in the diaspora. This informal open space, which has been developing since the early 1990s, is a place of encounter and discussion: Thai Park is in conflict with the park regulations, yet it has developed into an internationally popular, intercultural meeting place. For the exhibition, young artists from the un.thai.tled collective have come together, sharing a common language with the women they follow their own biographical approach behind the makeshift kitchens to form a community of memory. They approach this place from the perspectives of architecture, performative art, visual anthropology and media design in an artistic and research based way. They find images for shared experiences and the unifying aspect of meals, pursue historical interrelationships and speculate on the social possibilities of this special place, which they produce with their artistic works. Current plans for the redesign of the Preußenpark raise the question of the extent to which the social place created here is compatible with the district reality
Participating artists: Sarnt Utamachote (co-curator with Katrin Peters-Klaphake), Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, Itirit Hatairatana, Theerawat Klangjareonchai, Wisanu Phu-artdun, Bussaraporn Thongchai
Exhibition design: Suriya Poieam
Link to interview with Korientation Festival (German)
Impressions from the exhibition at Villa Oppenheim Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Berlin 2020, Photo by Benjamaporn Rattanaraungdetch
Photo from graduation work of Wisanu Phu-artdun “Homesick Recipe”. 2020