Santa Fe Art Institute
1600 St. Michaels Drive
Santa Fe NM 87502
presents
Walk with Me
SFAI Alumni Fellow Nuttaphol Ma presents Walk With Me, a contemplative installation about a migrant’s tale, a journey into the heart of Ma’s durational work of rebuilding his ancestral house. “I do not have much but what I do have are my body, my words and my actions. When woven together, humble acts and gestures placed onto contested sites become powerful voices of poetic resistance over the course of time.” Since 2011, Ma has taken on a lifelong project entitled “The China Outpost” which he defines as his nomadic sweatshop of one. The outpost operates within a migratory framework where Ma labors on transforming discarded plastic bags into threads – a material he will use as one of the core building materials for the eventual reconstruction of his great- grandfather’s home.
Walk With Me invites participants to wander within the lobby and gallery space at SFAI. Relics, artifacts and photo documentation of activities within The China Outpost fill the lobby space. A partial model of Ma’s ancestral house anchors the main gallery. The south wall is activated by a map of the outpost’s forthcoming transcontinental journey suggesting Ma’s radical cartographic approach in remapping “The Grand Army of the Republic Highway” with his body, actions and words. The north wall is blocked off by a handcrafted fabric wall that becomes the surface for Ma’s video projection of his durational walk along Highway 190 from the Badwater Basin to Whitney Portal.

Public programs to accompany the exhibition include the following:

SFAI Lunch Time Talk
Wed 25 Jul 2018 > 1200-100p
Title:  “Mapping The China Outpost: Temporal Settlements within a Cobweb of Contentious Spaces”
Description:  Nuttaphol Ma presents the context surrounding the formation of his on-going project entitled The China Outpost. Ma highlights significant events that shape its current migratory form.
Location:  SFAI Library
Link:  SFAI Facebook Event
Wed 12 Sep 2018 > 1200-100p
Title: “Work-in-Progress: How do I begin to talk about the spatial injustices that rest beneath the kindred sites of Angel Island and Shamian Island?”
Description:  Nuttaphol Ma examines the relationships between Angel Island and Shamian Island and how they relate to the future direction of The China Outpost project.
Location:  SFAI Library
Link:  SFAI Facebook Event
Film Screening
A series of films by Nuttaphol Ma will accompany the exhibition. Ma interweaves storytelling between each films to contextualize The China Outpost’s thematic exploration about invisible labor and her occupation of contested sites.
The films to be screened are the following:
+ Born by the River (28 min) . 2013
+ Shitpipe Explosion @ The China Outpost (28 min) . 2012
+ A Grain of Rice Under a Microscope (8 min) . 2013
+ The China Outpost > on the road @ Union Station (2 min) . 2014
+ The China Outpost > on the road . New Mexico . 01May027May2016 (15 min) . 2016
+ Mr. Proud, Why do I have to Memorize the Star Spangled Banner? (2 min) . 2017
Link:  SFAI / Walk wth Me / Film Screening / Nuttaphol Ma
24 Aug 2018 – 14 Sep 2018
Opening Reception:  Fri 24 Aug 2018 5p-8p with Artist Walkthrough @ 630p
Film Screening:  Thu 30 Aug 2018 730p-9p @ SFAI Lobby Space
Closing Reception:  Fri 14 Sep 2018 5p-8p
Gallery Hours:  Mon – Fri 10a – 5p
Phone:  505.424.5050
Link: SFAI / Walk with Me / Exhibition / Nuttaphol Ma

Artist Talk / Conversation, Exhibition, Film

27 July 2018

Leave a comment