Dye 2018

In her video-based performances, Kawita Vatanajyankur uses her own body as a tool, exploring and exploiting her physical and psychological limits through repetitive actions and endurance. Her practice, underpinned by her position as a woman in Thailand, is predicated on an ongoing interest in issues surrounding everyday labour – both inside and outside of the home. In 2018, Vatanajyankur spent six-weeks in Ōtepoti as the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s International Visiting Artist. This residency culminated in the exhibition Kawita Vatanajyankur: Performing Textiles, an exhibition that consisted of four new video works that looked at the objects, machines and processes used within the manufacture of textiles. In Dye, the artist’s body becomes a skein of fibres that are dipped into a bowl of red dye. Set in front of a colourful backdrop, Vatanajyankur is suspended by her ankles as she is repeatedly lowered in and out of the dye – an action that aims to build up the opacity of the dyed fibres but also speaks to the often-confronting physicality that operates within the artist’s practice.  

+Emily Hartley-Skudder
Staging Your Comeback 2020
Vinyl flooring, PVC wall stickers, wall paint, oil on linen, found basin and bath, MDF, soap, pine and aluminium trim
Courtesy of the artist and Jonathan Smart Gallery