Jakkai Siributr
APT9
Born 1969 Bangkok, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand
Jakkai Siributr is known primarily for his textile and embroidery works, and his installations increasingly offer an element of audience participation. Siributr is concerned with the unofficial histories that have been written out of Thai accounts, including the troubled co-existence between Buddhism and Islam in the south of the country. He creates a delicate tension between his subject matter — ongoing conflict driven by nationalistic discrimination against minorities — and the visual sensuality of his chosen form and materials. In his practice he has embroidered camouflage jackets and kapiyoh (head coverings) with Thai media imagery or drawings by Muslim children, and he creates symbolic flags that incorporate beads, seeds, seashells and plastic collected from the departure and arrival points for Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees. More recently, he has begun to engage with intersections between personal and regional histories, using family photographs and clothing with personal associations.
Jakkai Siributr has also worked with the QAGOMA Children's Art Centre to develop a project for APT9 Kids.
Jakkai Siributr’s fascination with textiles and embroidery began as a child in Bangkok, and led to studies in textile design in the United States before he returned to Thailand.
His work in APT9, 18/28: The Singhaseni Tapestries explores the connections between the artist’s family and Thailand’s political history. At the heart of the project is a homage to Siributr’s mother, whose five dresses are embroidered with scenes from news and family photographs. These scenes connect with passages from her diaries that can be heard as a recording in the centre of the installation of suspended tapestries – works that are made from hand-stitched fabrics acquired from seven aunts on the artist’s maternal side. Siributr’s mother was from the ancient Thai house of Singhaseni and 18/28 is the address of the compound where Siributr’s great grandmother took in the wife and seven daughters of Chit Singhaseni, a royal page executed over the mysterious death in 1946 of the Thai monarch King Rama VIII.
Siributr’s art advocates for recognising the complexities underlying official narratives, as well as the personal lives involved in these accounts that often go unacknowledged.
