Pray: Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic

Time: museum hours

Admission: with museum entrance

This exhibition extends beyond the festival dates. It is on view from March 25th – June 15th.

Korakrit Arunanondchai’s (1986, Bangkok, Thailand) work focuses on the transformative potential of storytelling. Through expansive video installations, paintings, objects, and performative works, he processes experiences in his personal environment just as he does political events, history and questions to our crisis-ridden present. Alex Gvojic (1984, Chicago, USA) is an artist and cinematographer whose practice focuses on creating “hyper-reality” environments that blend video, light, and cinematic tropes. 

Pray presents an installation of Arunanondchai and Gvojic’s most recent video Songs for living (2021). Presented within an immersive environment where a wishing pond reflects a submerged image onto a screen, visitors are invited to lie down and listen to the voices of the “ghosts” who narrate the films. The films follow the journey of these entities who speak for dead spirits, political regimes, family members, and animals, all entwined together and transforming into one another. 

Songs for living was co-written with the artist Diane Severin Nguyen, features narrations by singer Zsela, and was influenced by writings from Simone Weil, Édouard Glissant, and Czesław Miłosz. It also includes musical composition and direction by the producer Aaron David Ross. 

Foto: Pray: Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic, Songs for Living, 2021