Patani Semasa

MAIIAM, the Chiang Mai art museum which opened last year with an Apichatpong Weerasethakul retrospective, is currently showing Patani Semasa: An Exhibition on Contemporary Art from the Golden Peninsula (ปาตานี ร่วมสมัย: นิทรรศการศิลปะจากภูมิภาคปาตานี), a group exhibition of art that reflects the ethnic and religious identities of Thailand's southernmost region. The exhibition includes four works from Apichatpong's Photophobia project, incorporating images of the 2004 Tak Bai massacre.

Other works in the exhibition also address Tak Bai and similar instances of state violence. Jakkhai Siributr's installation 78 includes the names of the Tak Bai victims, embroidered onto black cloth. Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh's installation Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ), created shortly after the massacre, consists of eighty-nine tombstones, each representing a Tak Bai victim. (The original 2004 version also included rifles wrapped in white sheets.) Ruangsak Anuwatwimon's sculpture No Country Like Home was created from a granite tablet from Krue Se Mosque; the tablet's bullet holes are a physical reminder of a military massacre at the mosque on 28th April 2004, carried out under the command of Pallop Pinmanee.

Patani Semasa opened on 19th July, and will close on Valentine's Day next year. An exhibition catalogue is in preparation, and will be published next year.