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Recent art of Sakarin Krue-On: an interview.

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The art of Sakarin Krue-On involves a variety of approaches, from highly planned terraces based on traditional farming techniques to digital media installations. A key figure in establishing the media department at Silpakorn University, Thailand's premier training ground for artists and art historians, Krue-On was one of the seven representatives selected for the first-ever Thai Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), and he was the first Thai artist to participate in Documenta (2007). His Terraced Rice Field and Nang Fa (Angel), both site-specific installations at the 2007 Kassel exhibition, exemplify his interests in process art as well as traditional Thai painting. Similarly, Circle of Hope (2003), a single-screen video projection that depicts multiple images of a traditional Thai goddess in a rotating, pulsating circle of blue, pink, green, and purple concentric circles against a black background, is a compelling mix of technological imagery, somatic effect, and traditional Thai motifs.

Our conversation, conducted via e-mail in the summer and fall of 2007 and sporadically in early 2008, covered his recent major projects. In addition to the works shown at Documenta, we discussed Since 1958, an August 2007 exhibition at Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing, which addressed historical memory.

Sakarin Krue-On: My latest installation in China, Since 1958, is 10,000 locks of Chinese human hair. I bought this hair from a wholesaler in Bangkok, who ordered it from China. The Tang Contemporary Art gallery in Beijing is renovated from an old factory building built in the time when Communism was in full bloom in China. It was in 1958 that the Communist government established the first commune in Henan province. The commune was part of the Great Leap Forward, a plan to rapidly develop agricultural and industrial sectors in China. The commune was meant to abolish private ownership entirely; everyone had to work in the commune. The reason I used Chinese hair as a medium for this installation is that Henan has become the site of one of the world's biggest human-hair industries. From rice harvest to human-hair harvest.

Carol Salus: How does the use of human hair relate to your interests in exposing the negative effects of capitalism?

Krue-On: Xuchang in Henan has been the largest human-hair distribution center of China for many years. People in many villages trade hair for a living. They travel all over China to collect hair and after preliminary processing sell it to hair-product manufacturers. Both overseas and Chinese companies are setting up in the province. There are now 112 hair-product manufacturing enterprises in Xuchang, and eighteen of them are foreign-invested enterprises. It does not mean that people in the province become rich selling their hair. Some women say they receive just enough money to buy a pair of pants in exchange for the hair that had taken them years to grow.

Krue-On designed Terraced Rice Field, a major installation at Documenta 12, to reflect the merging of two cultural traditions. Schloss Wilhelmshohe (1786), in Kassel's historic Bergpark, has magnificent collections of Egyptian, classical, and Northern Baroque art, and especially important Rembrandt holdings. Its park grounds provided a striking backdrop to the terraced rice fields planted by...

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