Saroot Supasuthivech

‘River Kwai’ series and ‘Spirit-forward in G Major’
By Ian Tee

Saroot Supasuthivech, ‘Spirit-forward in G Major’, 2023, VR still. Image courtesy of the artist.

Through his immersive multimedia installations, Saroot Supasuthivech transports audiences into the emotional landscape of his subjects. Rooted in sociohistorical research of specific locations, his work gathers oral histories and lived experience of its communities. These testimonials are layered in juxtaposition with popular narratives, in a manner that raises doubt about the creation of histories and identities. 

Saroot Supasuthivech, ‘If I can make one wish…’, 2023, installation view at Nova Contemporary, Bangkok, Thailand. Image courtesy of the artist and Nova Contemporary.

‘River Kwai: This Memorial Service was Held in the Memory of the Deceased’ (2022) is a body of work grappling with the politics of memorialisation. Centred around the now-defunct Burma Railway which crosses into Thailand, ‘River Kwai’ addresses the magnitude of loss behind the railway’s construction during the Second World War. While well-recognised accounts estimated 70,000 Asian labourers, the historically accurate number of indentured Asian workforce exceeds 270,000. The multi-channel video problematises the celebratory tenor of commemorations organised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, which in the artist’s words “no longer represents a community, but a spectacle”. Saroot’s affective use of narrative devices and the colour blue invests a sense of solemnity into the subject.  

Documentation of the Thai song Sai Samon in French envoy Simon de la Loubere's Du Royaume de Siam (translated as A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, 1691) at the Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage, Germany, June 2023. Photo by the artist. Image courtesy the artist.

Saroot Supasuthivech, ‘Spirit-forward in G Major’, 2023, video still for projection screen. Image courtesy of the artist.

The theme of death is also found in Saroot’s latest project ‘Spirit-forward in G Major’ (2023). In particular, he is interested in the funerary practices of Thai expatriates in Germany and how they have evolved. In the Virtual Reality (VR) component of the project titled ‘A Glimpse Beyond’, audiences inhabit the perspective of the deceased and traverse an otherworldly environment with fragments of real-world locations. Among the digitally reconstructed sites is the Sala Thai, or open pavilion, in the German city of Bad Homburg, which is the only place outside of Thailand with two Sala Thai. The pavilion serves as an anchor for Thai history and culture. For Thai immigrants, it is a marker of familiarity amidst an alien landscape. Saroot simulates a similar sense of displacement through the VR experience, with the hope of humanising the diasporic journey. 

Click here to read our dialogue with Saroot Supasuthivech, where he speaks about his interest in rituals as a bridge that connects communities across time and geography.