Born in 1962 in Bangkok (TH). Lives and works in Bangkok (TH).
2012
25 stencil maps of 21 cities, constructed using wood, fabric (cotton), a light bulb, baby powder, Plexiglas case.
Dimensions variables
Year of Purchase: 2012
Nipan Oranniwesna studied at Silpakorn University in Bangkok, then at the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo. He began working in the mid-1990s by creating in-situ installations using a variety of materials and addressing themes ranging from intimate to political. It was with the City of Ghost installations that he represented Thailand at the Venice Biennale (2007) and participated at the Biennale of Sydney (2012). The artist also took part in numerous major art events in Asia, such as the Busan Biennale in South Korea (2008), the Kuandu Biennale in Taipei (2012), as well as the Setouchi Triennale in Japan (2013).
City of Ghost developed gradually from a piece entitled Ghost Skin (2005), created during an art residency in Manila in the Philippines. Feeling uprooted in a city he saw as foreshadowing Bangkok’s future, Nipan Oranniwesna began cutting out, using a precision knife, elements of a map reproduced on a restaurant menu. “There was nothing intellectual about my approach. I found my language by accident,” he explained in an interview. Very quickly, the artist had the idea of scattering powder on an actual dissected map that he used as a stencil. First combining the city plans of Bangkok and Manila, he went on to mix and match maps of different cities around the world, thus creating a new map: that of a ghost city.
Nipan Oranniwesna uses a razor blade to meticulously remove all existing spaces represented on the map leaving only the traffic networks (streets, roads, rivers, canals). The remaining matrix becomes depressed once the artist has dusted the area through the map-turned-stencil with fine baby powder, which the inhabitants of the tropical regions in Asia usually apply to their bodies after shower. The collective space of the city map thus acquires a hitherto unknown, intimate, corporeal dimension.
Humidity in the installation space helps coalesce the volatile matter on the surface of the fabric stretched tight over a wooden structure. “I wanted to talk about the visibility of existence that may collapse at any moment,” explained the artist. Indeed, “maps are an emblematic product of the modern world, they institute order.” Through this work, Nipan Oranniwesna examines how globalization fosters exchange and circulation even as it erases borders. Besides, it is by connecting different systems of circulation that the artist is able to combine different maps. Relying on the solidity of the cartographic convention, offset by the elusive instability of the material, City of Ghost creates an environment for experiencing the poetic and forward-looking dimension of our imaginary spaces.
Magali Le Mens