Prayer for Abhisot, 1994-2006.
Xerox machine, TV, DVD, Xerox paper

Montien Boonma was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1953. Since the late 1980s, his work has been included in major international exhibitions and he is recognized as one of the most important Thai artists of his generation. Boonma is known for his subtle material sensibility and his sculptures and installations that examine Buddhism from a contemporary perspective. Early works, inspired by ruins and Stupa structures in the Northern Thai area, were produced by incorporating local materials and found objects. By the early 1990s, Boonma’s work changed. He found a need to draw on personal experience. With his wife was dying of lung cancer, he produced the series entitled Arokaya Sala.

Boonma subsequently used herbs as material in his work and applied Stupa-shapes and  icons of question marks and exclamation marks as he searched for renewed hope. The sculptures from this time produce a meditative ambience, conveying the feeling of a sanctuary to their audiences. Boonma died prematurely of cancer in 2000.

Included in Saigon Open City are important works by Boonma. Stupa was created while he taught at Chiang Mai University in the early 1990’s. Drawing of the Mind Training and the Bowls of the Mind was produced in 1992, while The prayer for Abhisot from 1994 is an installation that consists of a TV monitor placed on top of a Xerox machine in an environment of interrogative and exclamatory marks. These signs fill the surrounding wallpaper of the environment, the question mark is repeated as a still image on the TV monitor, as it is being spat out of the Xerox machine on an endless number of photocopies. Boonma questions the reality that surrounds him, as he profoundly observes the interplay between his personal life and the environment.
(GG)