Wurlitzer Residency . 05Jun – 15Aug 2019 . Taos NM
Wurlitzer Residency
I will be at the Wurlitzer Residency in Taos over the next few months. Words cannot describe how thrilled I am! The alignment of my past dreams has led me to this forthcoming journey. One involving walking from a riverbank upwards to what I recalled being an open field. The other involved wandering in the mountains and witnessing an Elder blessing a young child. During my residency, I will embrace these dreams and bring them to my conscious by setting my body in motion on this land. I will wander the mountains surrounding Taos. In solitude with the land, I will search routes from the base of the Rio Grande to the grand mesa. Recordings of these unfolding moments surrounding these gestures will give form to my essay film, creating a kinship between stories, journeys, words, moving images, and sound.
SFAI140 . Fri 16Nov18 . 6-9p . Santa Fe Art Institute . Santa Fe NM
Santa Fe Art Institute
1600 St. Michaels Drive
Santa Fe NM 87502
SFAI 140
SFAI140 is a dynamic 140-second presentation platform highlighting the inspiration and work of 20 artists-in-residence at The Santa Fe Art Institute and community leaders in and around Northern New Mexico.
I’m honored to contribute to this Fall’s SFAI140 where I will be reading excerpt from a short essay I wrote this past summer entitled “… with Liberty and Justice for All…”. The piece sheds light on the origins of the pledge of allegiance and invites others to consider rewriting one’s own pledge in order to achieve a more equitable space.
Date: Friday 16 Nov 2018
Time: 6p-9p
Site: Santa Fe Art Institute
Link: SFAI 140
The China Onscreen Biennial – Dunhuang Projected > Artists in Conversation . Sun 28Oct18 . 1p-230p . Fowler Museum at UCLA
The China Onscreen Biennial (COB)
@ Fowler Museum (UCLA)
308 Charles E Young Dr. N
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Dunhuang Projected : Artists in Conversation
I am honored to be a part of the China Onscreen Biennial in consortium with national cultural institutions including the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Film at REDCAT and the Smithsonian Institution.
My film, entitled Wandering Movements, has been commissioned to be a part of COB’s Dunhuang Projected Sidebar – a short program that will be projected in the wait time before COB’s feature presentations for the duration of the Biennial.
Wandering Movements is inspired from a cave painting depicting a map of past devotees making pilgrimages to a sacred mountain of five plateaus (五台山). The film tells a story of a migrant’s journey to his inner plateaus as he reflects upon his sites of struggles, the meaning of borders and the shaping of one’s identity.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive will host a special screening of all the commissioned works for the Dunhuang Projected Sidebar at the Fowler Museum. The event will include my work along featured works of Erin Cosgrove, Inouk Demers, Tsai Charwei and Xie Caomin – followed by a discussion moderated by artist and Director of LA Freewaves Anne Bray.
Date: Sunday 28 Oct 2018
Time: 1p – 230p
Site: Fowler Museum at UCLA
Links:
+ Artists in Conversation @ Fowler
+ About the 4th China Onscreen Biennial
Remember Our Ancestral Tree . Sat 29Sep18 . 6p-10p . Burnside Farm > Detroit MI
Burnside Farm
Detroit . Michigan
Sat 29 Sep 2018 . 6p-10p
Remember Our Ancestral Tree . a performance by Nuttaphol Ma
Burnside Farm residents refer to the tallest tree living on their site as “Grandfather Maple”. I’ve only seen photos of Grandpa Maple. One of them stood out. It depicted Grandpa Maple’s presence and how he cared for the land in the midst of debris.
As Thais, we believe that spirits live in old trees like Grandpa Maple. Oftentimes, we wrap cloths around such tree to signify that a spirit inhabits the tree. At other places in Thailand that are facing deforestation, monks respond by ordaining trees residing within the endangered forest. They wrap their orange robe around the trunk of the largest or oldest tree to ward off further cuttings.
On 29 Sep, I shall make a pilgrimage to pay my respect to Grandfather Maple with a performance entitled Remember our Ancestral Tree. At the base of Grandfather Maple I shall perform the act of wrapping a hand-dyed discarded fabric around the sacred tree. The performance will engage with the Burnside community on a meditative journey of remembering our ancestors with simple gestures of writing, mark making and wrapping. In the spirit of healing, the performance concludes with a ritual meal that I shall prepare to honor the tree, the ancestors of this land, and our personal ancestors.
A film screening will follow our communal meal. The film, entitled “Flower Remember Year”, circles around serendipitous conversations that has led me to El Santuario de Chimayo to collect sacred soil from the site to be used to replant a tree that once existed at the back of my parent’s house as a way of making sense of my father’s diminishing health. This tree blossoms fragrant flowers called “dawg jam bee”, which loosely translates to flower . remember . year.
Defining Detritus . 08Sep18 – 06Oct18 . Opening Reception Sat 08Sep 6-9p . Arena 01 Gallery
Arena 01 Gallery
3026 Airport Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Defining Detritus
curated by China Adams
“Defining Detritus brings together a group of Los Angeles based artists who share the practice of regularly working in collage – a medium that speaks specifically to the transient nature of material. Collage celebrates the decayed, worn-out and cast-aside. The exhibition offers a visual metaphor on how art can help us come to terms with our fragility (and even find beauty in it).” – China Adams
Participating artists: China Adams, Sandy de Lissovoy, Renée Fox, Jane Handel, Jacci Den Hartog, Doug Harvey, Seonna Hong, Jason Ellenburg Jones, Bernard Leibov (Boxo), John Luckett, Lilah Lutes, Nuttaphol Ma, Marisa Mandler, David McDonald, Michael Oliveri, Angela Stage, Don Suggs, Young Y. Summers, Jake Townsend, Ozzy Trujillo, Joan Weinzettle, Ewa Wojciak, Joan Wulf, HK Zamani, and Alexis Zoto.
Think towards arrival, but not of lost heart. – Nuttaphol Ma
For the exhibition, I present คิดถึงได้แต่อย่าเสียใจ (Kit tung dai, deh yah sieh jai). They are words from a Thai elder which loosely translate to the title of my ephemeral sculpture – Think towards arrival, but not of lost heart. The resulting work for the show gestures an act of ancestral veneration. Using debris from newspaper and cast-off cardboard packaging material, I set out to collage these elements to construct a model of my ancestral house. For the duration of the exhibition, the object becomes a temporal spirit house. It rests on handcrafted sawhorses made from discarded wood scraps. At the end of the exhibition, my family and I will cremate the house as an offering to our ancestors. The ashes will be collected for my eventual pilgrimage to the highest peak of continental US. There, I shall offer these ashes to the spirits in the sky.
08 Sep 2018 – 06 Oct 2018
Opening Reception: Sat 08 Sep 2018 . 6p-9p
Gallery Hours: Wed – Sat 12noon – 6pm
Phone: 310.397.7456
Link: Arena 1 Gallery – Defining Detritus
Walk with Me . 24Aug18 – 14Sep18 . Reception > (opening) Fri 24Aug 5-8p (closing) Fri 14Sep 5-8p . Film Screening Thu 30Aug 730p-9p . Santa Fe Art Institute
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
Walk with Me / Film Screening . Thu 30 Aug . 730p-9p Santa Fe Art Institute
Santa Fe Art Institute
1600 St. Michaels Drive
Santa Fe NM 87502
presents
Nuttaphol Ma: Walk with Me >>> Film Screening
A series of films by Nuttaphol Ma will accompany his Walk with Me 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 (28min) . 2013
From a chance finding of a B/W photo circa 1885 of an unknown Chinese laborer working in Death Valley, Nuttaphol Ma took on his persona to march out of Badwater Basin. The resulting essay film questions the interpretation of the structural remnants of Harmony Borax Works, the laborer’s employer, as to why the plaque of this national landmark honors the owner and not the workers. This absurdist undertaking exemplifies what one can do to break the silent norm. The work begins my probe into the ideals of the American Dream by revealing the spatial injustice of such contested sites.
Shitpipe Explosion @ The China Outpost (28min) . 2012
The short film captures an event that took place at The China Outpost, a self-imposed sweatshop created by Nuttaphol Ma at the basement of a defunct art gallery in Chinatown Los Angeles from 01 Oct 2011 to 31 Dec 2012. As a result of sewage water from the gallery’s toilet directly above the sweatshop overflowing into the space, Ma was told that part of the sweatshop was to be jack-hammered on 10 Feb 2012. In preparation for the event, Ma cut the site in half, one side to continue to iron while the other side to stage the workers’ excavation and realignment of the shitpipes below. Readings from Maxine Hong Kingston, Andrew Lam, dialogues between the unknown workers, sounds from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, the saw, the pounding align the seemingly disconnected points to create murmurs between the spectacle of the mundane and the absurdity of the everyday.
A Grain of Rice Under a Microscope (8min) . 2013
The film’s undertaking was inspired from an event that took place at Ma’s retail day job on a busy Autumn Sunday in 2010. One of his colleague approached him looking deeply distraught. She saw our managers watching our activities on the sales floor from the office’s computer monitor making a “play-by-play” commentary of us. This exchange left the artist numbed – waking up the following day feeling like a grain of rice under a microscope.
In 2013, Ma set out to retrace his experience of that busy Autumn Sunday. Under his own terms, he performed the act of sitting and surveying in and around the premise of a fast food restaurant to mirror the 8 hour shift of the workers behind the counter. Two rolls of B/W super 8 film were deconstructed to shoot one frame for every four seconds in order to captured his 8 hour sitting where he recorded unfolding events and conversations that occurred between management, himself and two police officers.
The China Outpost > on the road @ Union Station (2min) . 2014
According to the statement of significance from National Register Nomination, “ Los Angeles Union Station, is a very handsome landmark that is a milestone in architectural history and the history of transportation in America.” What the statement of significance failed to acknowledge was the displacement of community members of what was the original Chinatown where the station is built upon. Ma’s site specific performance of re-situating and working within the mobile unit of The China Outpost at Union Station silently protested the spatial injustice that lies beneath the land. The durational performance of processing plastic bags into threads at this contested site invited curious passerby to meaningful conversation about my actions and the history of Union Station.
Whist there, Mike, a wanderer from St. Louis approached him. He asked the wanderer if he has family. His mother lives in Phoenix caring for his 84 year old grandmother. Ma asked him why not join them. He responded, “the house is too small.”
The China Outpost > on the road . New Mexico . 01May-27May2016 (15min) . 2016
Day in and day out, from 01May to 27May 2016, The China Outpost occupied parking lots of big box stores along Cerrillos Road – a major thoroughfare leading to Santa Fe that has eroded its intimacy to a web of megastores. The sociocultural interventions at these contested sites function as make-shift forums that invite curious passerby to open ended conversations about migration and the labor of adapting to a new home.
The month’s work is housed in an essay film that captured an unscripted journey culminating to a serendipitous conversation with the Governor of Abiquiu Pueblo named Ten Crows in which he posed an un-answerable question, that is … How do we free our oppressors?
Mr. Proud, Why do I Have to Memorize the Star Spangled Banner? (2min) . 2017
Invisible labor goes unseen, unheard and those who put in the labor repeat the task over and over again. It is an arduous conditioning of the mind to stomach the pace, the rhythm. It is heroic because collectively these unspoken tasks are the voiceless blood and tears of our socio-economic landscape. This site specific durational work transforms the gallery’s wall space into a form of a flag – a nameless, stateless flag that honors the heroic mundane with dimension repurposed from a typical drywall size flipped horizontally.
The video documents the labor of Ma’s wall markings that took place at Human Resources Gallery’s “off” hours at 8 hour shift intervals as part of his durational performance work. These hours replicated the graveyard shift suggesting not as an artist’s attempt to romanticize and patronize the idea of invisible labor but it was Ma’s honest truth. At the time of making this piece, the artist juggled jobs between multiple teaching sites and his retail day job. The only available hours in the day to navigate around his situation was from 11pm to 7am.
Place: Santa Fe Art Institute
Date: Thu 30 Aug 2018
Time: 730p – 9p
Phone: 505.424.5050
Link: SFAI / Walk with Me / Film Screening / Nuttaphol Ma
Lunch Time Talks with Nuttaphol Ma . Wed 25Jul18 noon-1p + Wed 12Sep18 noon-1p @ Santa Fe Art Institute
Santa Fe Art Institute
1600 St. Michaels Drive
Santa Fe NM 87502
presents
Lunch Time Talk with Nuttaphol Ma
Join SFAI Alumni Fellow, Nuttaphol Ma, for lunch time talks on Wednesday, 25Jul and Wednesday, 12Sep from noon- 1p in the SFAI Library.
Date: Wed 25 Jul 2018 . noon – 1p
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.
Link: SFAI Facebook Event
Date: Wed 12 Sep 2018 . noon – 1p
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.
Link: SFAI Facebook Event
Contact Details:
Phone: 505.424.5050
MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal . 20Jan – 29Mar 2018 . Curated by Ciara Ennis and Jennifer Vanderpool . Reception 20Jan 3-5p @ Pitzer College Nichols Gallery . Symposium 23Mar 10a-3p @ Pitzer College Benson Auditorium
Pitzer College Art Gallery
1050 N Mills Avenue
Claremont CA 91711
presents
MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal
The people have spoken. They have put it in writing. They have created manifestos. Pitzer College Art Galleries has collected these works and put them on display in MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal, an exhibition of the ideas, wishes and demands of scores of citizens with something to say and a need to be heard. It is our current climate of discord that created Manifesto: A Moderate Proposal. It was conceived to give these citizens a soapbox and to amplify their voices.
MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal is a multitude of opinions hung densely, floor-to-ceiling, in sections that reflect the numerous themes that include immigration, ableism, race, resistance, religion and gentrification. Funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the exhibition was conceived as an outlet for ideas and proposals for the healing of discord in our society and improvement of conditions for all citizens. With the public sphere embroiled in a seemingly intractable contest of us-versus-them so virulent that it has filtered down to a neighbor-vs-neighbor antagonism, it is essential that we reexamine just who we are and what we stand for. MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal has joined the conversation.
The art community has come together. In solidarity, we are
Alexandra Juhasz & Craig Dietrich, Alice Könitz, Alice Marie Perreault, Alison O’Daniel, Amy Elkins, Andrea Bowers, Andrew Bracey, Alice Wingwall, Anthony Bodlović, April Bey, Arseli Dokumaci, Astri Swendsrud, Ava Morton, Bill Anthes, Byron Toledo, Candice Lin, Carlin Wing, Carlos Jackson, Carrie Paterson, Catherine Long, Cathy Akers, Charlotte Sherman, Chris Christian, Chris Michno, Christina Ondrus, Connie Samaras, Dana Sperry and Natalya Pinchuk, Danielle Adair, David Goldblatt, David Michael Lee, Doran George, Edgar Endress, Edgar Heap of Birds, Edgar Arceneaux, Elena Bajo, Elana Mann & John Burtle, Faith Wilding, Faye Ray, Fiona Jack, First Street Gallery Art Center: Patrick Dwyre, Katie Mendoza and Joe Zaldivar, Francesca Lalanne, Glenn Harcourt, Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya), Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, Helén Svensson, Ian Ingram, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Ingrid Von Sydow, Jane Callister, Jennifer Moon, Jennifer Moon & Laub, Jen Smith, Jenny Perlin, Jenny Yurshansky, Jesse Lerner, Jessica McCoy, Jessica Wimbley, Joe Parker, Johanna Karlin, Josh Callaghan, Joyce Campbell, Juan Siliverio, Julia Haft Candell, Juliet Johnson, Justin Arroyo, Kang Seung Lee, Karen Lofgren, kate-hers RHEE (이미래), Kaucyila Brooke, Kotti & Co, Berlin, Liat Yossifor, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Lisa Jevbratt, Liz Glynn, Liz Young, Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, Luis Zepeda, Mary Clare Stevens, Matt Ohm, Martabel Wasserman, Max King Cap, Michael Parker, Michelle Dizon, Michelle Wiener, Mike Bode, Nancy Baker Cahill, Nuttaphol Ma, Olga Koumoundouros, Peter Su, Racial Imaginary, Robin Lehleitner, Sadie Barnette, Sandra de la Loza & Eduardo Molinari, Sara Hendren & Caitrin Lynch, Sarita Dougherty, Seher Uysal, Seth Pringle, Sheila Pinkel, Southwark Notes, London, Stephanie Syjuco, Suné Woods, The artists from California Institution for Women, Chino, The artists from California Rehabilitation Center, Norco, The Rational Dress Society, Theo Tegelaers, Timothy Berg & Rebekah Myers, Tom Skelly, Tony Crowley, Ultra Red & School of Echoes, Los Angeles, Vermont College of Fine Arts | VCFA: Felipe Baeza, Hazel Batrezchavez, Julian Harper, Luis Mejico, pegah pasalar, Ythan Ponio, Zahra Zavareh, and XIAOQING ZHU, Victoria Marks, Việt Lê, Von Curtis, Warren Neidich, Weshoyot Alvitre, Women’s Center for Creative Work, Xarabyte
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I am thrilled and honored to be a part of this collective voice. My contributing MANIFESTO is entitled Small Gestures > Poetic RESISTANCE!
“I do not have much but what I do have are my body, my words, and my actions. When woven together, these humble acts of small gestures become powerful voices of poetic resistance over the course of time. Since 2011, I’ve taken on a lifelong project entitled The China Outpost which I define as my nomadic sweatshop of one. It operates within a migratory framework where I labor on transforming discarded plastic bags into threads – a material I am amassing as one of the core building materials for the eventual reconstruction of my ancestral house.
The work presented in the exhibition maps out The China Outpost’s transcontinental journey across US-Route 6, also known as “The Grand Army of the Republic Highway”. The map details all the towns intersecting Route 6 which will become sites for the outpost’s sociocultural interventions as make-shift forums that invite passerby to open ended conversations about migration and the labor of adapting to a new home.”
秉宏 