Womanifesto: Crafting Communities at Asia Art Archive

Between 1997 and 2008, the feminist biennial Womanifesto in Thailand sought to create networks in art and activism that enacted gender equity and socio-economic justice at a time when biennials in Asia were taking shape.

Through its gatherings, Womanifesto joined the interests of the rural poor and the urban middle classes while connecting women's issues with environmental activism and the need for economic redistribution. Thailand's male-dominated art scene, focused on individual genius rather than collective creativity, was addressed as part of broader structural issues producing urban/rural class tensions, as well as the nationalistic violence of incidents like the 2008 Preah Vihear border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia.

Exhibition view: Crafting Communities, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (16 July–30 November 2020). Courtesy Asia Art Archive. Photo: Kitmin Lee.

For Crafting Communities at Hong Kong's Asia Art Archive (AAA) (16 July–30 November 2020), head of research John Tain charts the history of Womanifesto with a display of materials on loan for a digitisation project to be launched in autumn. This profile of persistence starts with a jute-covered display board featuring a small publication for Tradisexion, a 1995 event credited with conceiving Womanifesto.

Six artists organised and participated in Tradisexion, including Nitaya Ueareeworakul, later the most committed among the group to organising the biennial. The publication's cover—a painting by Nitaya Ueareeworakul of two female nudes, backs turned, arms hidden, and legs locked—is representative of its contents. Artist statements and texts by writers explore conditions that the publication's editor Jittima Pholsawek describes in her poem 'No Entry for Women', as 'Born with regulations / No exceptions'...READ MORE