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ผกา เดอ พลอว (Paka - de - Plaw)

Bloom with the wind blows 

(2024)

At HOP - Hub Of Photography

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Grow and Remember me, 2024

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Crow flower seed on Flat acrylic

60*60 cm

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         ' When I started this project, my search for and photographing of flowers was inspired by those used in ceremonies to honor my ancestors. As I walked to find them, This process involved learning, journeying, and searching, with a sense of purpose and remembrance. It wasn‘t just about flowers—it was about revisiting the stories of my family and the experiences shared by people who went through war and sought refuge. As I explored these places, I felt the echoes of past struggles, resilience, and the enduring spirit of the people. This project carries my genuine feelings throughout the journey, and each flower I captured represents a piece of their stories. '

 

Re Intertwine, 2024

From curatorial statement:

The photographs of flowers in the blurred Iandscape of the borderlands, The representation of fragmented memories due to war.

In the year 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge) seized the Phnom Penh and overthrew the Khmer Republic government. Over the course of 3 years and 8 months under the Khmer Rouge regime, there were many massacres of innocent people, and resulting in one of the largest genocides in history. Moreover, during this time, many people who tried to escape and were parted from their families, whether disappeared, died in a refugee camp, taken to a distant land or even had to immigrate to settle in other countries...

Blooms With The Wind Blows, Marisa Srijunpleang's first solo exhibition, presenting her story through photographs of clumps of grass flowers from the Thai-Cambodian border area. Srijunpleang searches for memories of her family that were fragmented and separated during the war. Along with sought out these grass flowers, which grew and bloomed along the refuge route. Due to the nature of grass flowers, which grow and spread out along the paths following the blowing of the wind, necessitates growing in many contexts or different soil and atmospheric conditions. This intertwines with the narrative of Cambodian survival during times of genocide; they hide evidence of themselves identity and their families by burying that in the ground. This makes the photographs of the grass flowers surrounding the exhibition, seem like superimposed images of ordinary people who have been blown away by the gales of history, and serving as a representation of the spirit that guiding back to the place where her family's earliest stories began, and also included a representative image of marks and traces that grow from the area of site memory.

In the exhibition, Srijunpleang also used an old picture frame that once held the only remaining picture of her grandfather, to exhibit the pictures of grass flowers from her home area in Surin, and displaying with a photographs of grass flower on the floor of the old refugee camp where her grandfather passed away. She also presented her dialogue while searching for her grandparents' homeland in Cambodia, through moving image of flowers in various landscapes that she encountered during this journey, leading to the image of a Crown flower from a place that once the old home of her family, which she searched for and found, along with the intonation of the calling of the ancestral spirits from the "Sandonta"; a Thai - Cambodians ritual to pay homage to the ancestors. Additionally, throughout the journey Srijunpleang gradually collected the seeds of Crown flower from her house in Surin to an old place of her grandparent in Cambodia, using them to create sculptures resembling the "Phaka Bai Ben", a tray of flower bushes for worship in the Sandonta. This imagery of Crown flower seeds resembles the dust of memory, and the mist of the spirit that resides in the land, in the place, in the memory. And also causes the flowers in the exhibition to overlap with the description of "Phaka Bai Ben", the flower according to the myths of the Sandonta ritual, which looks like a white grass flower and smells like jasmine, the flower that used for pay homage to the spirits of ancestors.

Blooms With The Wind Blows, therefore, does not merely present photographs of flower of grass in the twilight zone or the wild. Instead, Srijunpleang presents the journey along the route and the places for refuge, to uncover stories of family members and gain insight into the missing fragmented pieces of memory. The photographs of flowers in the grand frame symbolize the profound importance of people's memories and lives. Meanwhile, the surrounding flowers also represent the memories that are still graven and embed within the place and the route. Additionally, the appearance of a white grass flower growing out from the ground, emphasizes the significance of flowers in ritual, in mythology, and in history, serving as a condolence for those who have passed away and passing on the essence of blooming to someone, those who are still alive

 

Nutdanai Songsriwilai

Curator

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Fluffy all the ground, 2024

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Resolute with the Wind, 2024

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Land with Ground Stars, 2024

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Ban Lamphuk Refugee Camp, 2024

1 Channel Video Installation

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                                                                                                                                                 21.15  minute

INSTALLATION VIEW PHOTO

BY THITAPHAT CHIMPRASERT

(2024) ผกา เดอ พลอว, Bloom with the wind blows (2024) 

CURATED BY NUTDANAI SONGSRIWILAI

HOP - Hub Of Photography, 3rd floor, WHOOP! 

Seacon Square Srinaka Bangkok , Thailand

 

COPYRIGHT © 2017-2024 MARISA SRIJUNPLEANG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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