Manit Sriwanichpoom’s photography exhibition Fear (กลัว), held in Bangkok and Singapore in 2016, documented the volatile political atmosphere in Thailand prior to the 2014 coup, and the initial period following the junta’s takeover. The excellent accompanying catalogue remains a valuable record of a timely yet politically sensitive exhibition.
Discussing the title, Fear, in a short interview published in the catalogue, Manit explains that “today’s great fear is over something we can’t discuss aloud.” This has echoes of Taiki Sakpisit’s short film The Age of Anxiety (รอ ๑๐), which addressed the fear of the death of King Rama IX in the twilight of his reign. The link is reinforced by the catalogue’s cover image: a photograph of an 1868 solar eclipse predicted by King Rama IV shortly before his death.
Manit bravely included large-scale portraits of National Council of Peace and Order and National Legislative Assembly members (the coup leaders and the legislators they appointed), pixellated to obscure their identities. Though their individuality is denied, their uniforms are still visible, presenting them en masse as a faceless—and therefore inhuman—authoritarian entity. Similarly, screengrabs of technical glitches during coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha’s first televised Return Happiness to the People (คืนความสุข ให้คนในชาติ) speech highlight the vulnerability behind the propaganda façade.
Although Manit satirised the junta’s populist propaganda, he was also critical of the government overthrown by the coup, and he endorsed the People’s Democratic Reform Committee protesters who laid the groundwork for the military takeover. The catalogue describes the legacy of former PM Yingluck Shinawatra, subject of another photo series, as something “we now long to forget.” Introducing photographs of police vehicles vandalised beyond repair by the PDRC, the catalogue even claims: “these cars were not destroyed; merely overturned and coloured... They could still be saved to run upright again.”
The most powerful work in the Fear exhibition was the short video Primitive (ป่าเถื่อน), a montage of sixty-five photographs of bloodstains on the base of Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, accompanied by plaintive cello music. These dark red smears—one of which appears on the back cover of the catalogue—are grisly reminders of an attack on PDRC protesters on 15th May 2014, when three people were killed by unknown assailants heavily armed with M79 grenade launchers and M16 automatic rifles.
Discussing the title, Fear, in a short interview published in the catalogue, Manit explains that “today’s great fear is over something we can’t discuss aloud.” This has echoes of Taiki Sakpisit’s short film The Age of Anxiety (รอ ๑๐), which addressed the fear of the death of King Rama IX in the twilight of his reign. The link is reinforced by the catalogue’s cover image: a photograph of an 1868 solar eclipse predicted by King Rama IV shortly before his death.
Manit bravely included large-scale portraits of National Council of Peace and Order and National Legislative Assembly members (the coup leaders and the legislators they appointed), pixellated to obscure their identities. Though their individuality is denied, their uniforms are still visible, presenting them en masse as a faceless—and therefore inhuman—authoritarian entity. Similarly, screengrabs of technical glitches during coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha’s first televised Return Happiness to the People (คืนความสุข ให้คนในชาติ) speech highlight the vulnerability behind the propaganda façade.
Although Manit satirised the junta’s populist propaganda, he was also critical of the government overthrown by the coup, and he endorsed the People’s Democratic Reform Committee protesters who laid the groundwork for the military takeover. The catalogue describes the legacy of former PM Yingluck Shinawatra, subject of another photo series, as something “we now long to forget.” Introducing photographs of police vehicles vandalised beyond repair by the PDRC, the catalogue even claims: “these cars were not destroyed; merely overturned and coloured... They could still be saved to run upright again.”
The most powerful work in the Fear exhibition was the short video Primitive (ป่าเถื่อน), a montage of sixty-five photographs of bloodstains on the base of Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, accompanied by plaintive cello music. These dark red smears—one of which appears on the back cover of the catalogue—are grisly reminders of an attack on PDRC protesters on 15th May 2014, when three people were killed by unknown assailants heavily armed with M79 grenade launchers and M16 automatic rifles.
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