Original sin

In an effort to make a story about interior design a little less like a story about interior design, I visit a gently funky art gallery on Silom Road. They’re showing paintings and sculptures by Preyawit Nilachulaka, and the collision of childlike cartoon imagery, sexual transgression and violent humiliation immediately makes me think of Jeff Koons and/or the Chapman Brothers. Now, you could argue that this another example of Asia appropriating an aspect of Western culture and working out how to remake it just that little bit cheaper; and sell it back to the dumb farang; except that Jeff and Jake and Dinos already did that to Popeye and Goya and any number of other flakes from the scalp of occidental art. And then I thought that a Thai wandering through a gallery in London or New York might come across a Koons or a Chapman and think, bloody hell, some cheeky bugger’s ripping off Preyawit. Or whatever that might be in Thai.

And then I pop into the Sri Maha Mariamman temple, which I’ve passed dozens of times over the years, and watch the devotions to the goddess Uma (as in Thurman) and hear a four-note mantra, repeated over and over, a female voice, and I think, bloody hell, some cheeky bugger’s ripping off this: