A fluid art platform
By Mary Pansanga

'My Own Words' is a monthly series which features personal essays by practitioners in the Southeast Asian art community. They deliberate on their locality's present circumstances, articulating observations and challenges in their respective roles.

I started writing this essay while preparing for the pop-up exhibition of Prae Pupityastaporn and Pathompon Tesprateep at a ceramic shop and studio in Bangkok. This event is part of the ‘expensive to be poor’ project, which I co-founded with artists Pratchaya Phinthong and Tanatchai Bandasak in December 2020. In addition to talking about art, we often discuss art platforms—an important factor in any art scene—places where art and its audiences can connect and activate each other. At the time, the market—and the world—had suddenly stopped, but new ideas and creation continued to flow. The project was shaped by the urgency of that global situation, and was a response to social and financial hardships.

Screenshot of www.expensivetobepoor.net. Image courtesy of expensive to be poor.

A contemporary art platform without boundaries, expensive to be poor took the form of a commercial website, an online store where Thai artists’ works are available for under THB10,000. The title came from a project that Pratchaya had conceived with his South African artist friend, Yonamine. The phrase reflects the experience of poverty and inequality.¹

Trade and exchange in the arts can help to create new connections, fluctuation and movement in art circles. expensive to be poor aims to be a platform for a kind of extension and propulsion for artists. By making their artworks accessible to a wider audience, it broadens and stimulates a climate for collecting.

“Trade and exchange in the arts can help to create new connections, fluctuation and movement in art circles. expensive to be poor aims to be a platform for a kind of extension and propulsion for artists.”

The artists produced new work within the project’s price range. Each work available on our website is accompanied by a short statement of the ideas behind it. To share and communicate artists' practices is an important part of the project.

‘Open New Window’ pop-up exhibition, installation view at 3FL 469 Phrasumen Road, Bowonniwet Phranakon, Bangkok. Photo by Atelier 247. Images courtesy of expensive to be poor.

One year after we launched online and as a sense of normality began to return, we decided to hold our first pop-up exhibition ‘Open New Window’. It was December 2021. The ability to meet and have conversations in person seemed like a window letting in a fresh breeze. This event allowed people to have a first look at the online collection, along with new works from artists who had recently joined the project.

Most of the works were being shown for the first time. We designed the exhibition in response to the openness of the space, an unrenovated print house in Bangkok’s old town, together with the artist Sathit Sattarasart who provided the brick pedestal design for our table-top display. This simple pop-up presentation created a friendly environment for visitors to experience the artworks up-close and consider acquiring them. Visitors could then refer back to the website in their own time.

In 2022, we operated mainly online, inviting more artists on board and gradually making more works available. During the pandemic lockdown period, this project made an important contribution to the art scene, and also financially for the participating artists. The co-founders receive a small commission which covered the project expenses. Above all, the direct encounter between audience and artwork is still most valuable.

At the beginning of 2023, we added a new collection called ‘+0’ which expanded the parameters of the catalogue up to the price limit of THB100,000. This offered the audience greater variety, afforded artists wider scope for producing new work, and gave us a pretext for reintroducing their existing works.

Sathit Sattarasart, ‘Today will be a quiet day’, 2009, newspaper advertisement, web offset press (14.4.2009), 70 x 85cm (with wooden frame). Image courtesy of expensive to be poor.

‘Today will be a quiet day’, pop-up exhibition, installation view at Vacilando Bookshop, Bangkok. Image courtesy of expensive to be poor.

We launched the ‘+0’ collection both on our website and in a short pop-up exhibition. The goal of this event was to present the works in a site-specific manner. We are precise in selecting venues that generate a dialogue among works, architecture and audience. The viewer was invited to re-read certain works in a new context, like Sathit Sattarasart‘s ‘Today will be a quiet day’ (2009), a text piece distributed as a paid newspaper advertisement at a time of complex political conflict and civic unrest. It was displayed again after 14 years at the small, independent Vacilando Bookshop.

‘artifact’, 2023, installation view of pop-up exhibition at YARNNAKARN, Bangkok. Featuring Pathompon Tesprateep’s ‘strange fruit: clay sculpture’ (2023) and Prae Pupityastaporn’s ‘Lost and Found’ (2009). Image courtesy of expensive to be poor.

The latest ‘+0’ pop-up exhibition brings the 2009 ‘Lost and Found’ painting series of Prae Pupityastaporn together with ‘strange fruit: clay sculpture’ (2023), a new series of generative images by Pathompon Tesprateep. Both artists’ works reveal a concern for craftsmanship, bridging archaeological and artificial intelligence. This time, the works are displayed in the waiting room of YARNNAKARN, a ceramic shop and studio. New associations emerge from the intermingling of objects in this space, creating a dialogue between future, past and present.

‘~ onsite 01’ installation conceived by Yuki Kishino, exhibition view at Bangkok University Gallery (BUG). Images courtesy of expensive to be poor.

Apart from trading artworks, we also use our landing page and Instagram account for an online project called ‘~’, which we started in 2021. Participants are invited to select or make a short video clip in response to the previous clip. It is a continuous, collective process in which each author prompts another contribution. The project turns on movement, and is an exchange that encourages echoes and correspondence, as participants contribute from different fields in the art scene and from around the world.

“Apart from trading artworks, we also use our landing page and Instagram account for an online project called ‘~’, which we started in 2021. Participants are invited to select or make a short video clip in response to the previous clip. It is a continuous, collective process in which each author prompts another contribution. ”

In March 2023, ‘~’ was invited to manifest as an onsite exhibition at Bangkok University Gallery (BUG). We extended the theme of movement by inviting Yuki Kishino, a Japanese artist based in Berlin, to conceive this first physical installation. It consisted of a set up where offline visitors became part of a live stream that the online audience could watch remotely on our website. We called this exhibition ‘~ onsite 01’, in hopes that the project would be invited to show again and we could invite new artists to come up with other configurations.

expensive to be poor began as an e-commerce site but we allowed the idea to expand, be reshaped, and reformatted. We aim to continue this physical and conceptual dilation. We are currently planning the next pop-up exhibition which will happen outside of Bangkok. You are more than welcome to follow us!

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of A&M.

This essay was first published in CHECK-IN 2023, A&M’s third annual publication. Click here to read the digital copy in full, or to purchase a copy of the limited print edition.

Read all My Own Words essays here.

Notes
¹The phrase “it is expensive to be poor” is derived from a passage in James Baldwin’s 1961 book Nobody Knows My Name.