A young Thai female university student designed the giant gangly teddy bears above. Wouldn't these soft sculptures make an imaginative seating area for a little kids' playroom?! Her artist's statement describes a childhood memory of waking up early with her mom to prepare flowers and food for monks.
One gallery exhibits lithographs and paintings made by kids to raise funds for a school in their community in Southern Thailand. Photo albums illustrate their agricultural livelihood, so patrons know where the proceeds from their purchases are going!
"The Classroom" is a multimedia work evoking the familiar space from elementary school education. 
For some, this is/was a place where talents would shine or where one would struggle to keep up - a place where class clowns have an audience and rebels challenge the teacher's authority. The anxiety of finding your place in "the classroom" at school is supposed to help you find your place in the world... But it's not the ideal learning environment for everyone!
The artists pose the questions: How does this room compare to the classroom of life, where there are more ways than one to ace a test? But also, how do we all share the same common and even predictable triumphs and struggles as adults?
*The Bangkok Art and Culture Center is a huge, gray-white cylindrical building across from the National Stadium at the BTS station there. It looks a bit like the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, only bigger. At BACC, the city provides free gallery space for artists and design shop owners to display their creations! The most recent exhibits I've seen feature things including recycled accessories, artwork made by children with Autism to support awareness, among other work with undertones of social and environmental responsibility.
So interesting! A comment about your very last sentence - A few years back when I was still in the classroom we had to have the kids make things with "clean" trash/garbage (egg cartons, milk cartons, paper towel tubes, etc...). There was actually a name for it - ??? Technology - I can't remember the whole name, but it was the same idea that you described above - using recycled things to make artwork and other fun things. About the soft sculpture - that is very clever and I agree with you - it belongs in a young child's playroom or even a preschool setting. It would be so cute to watch kids just learning to crawl, trying to crawl all over it!
ReplyDeleteThank you Aunt Maureen.. Sometimes I think it's because you are a school librarian but probably because you just magically always know what kids like best that you come up with the most fun ideas. I don't know the name for using "clean" trash to make things, but it seems these kind of creative challenges help kids (or adults, let's be real!) teach resourcefulness!
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