Pratchaya Phinthong. The Organ of Destiny

May 14 - July 16, 2022
Opening: Saturday May 14, 4 pm - 7 pm

Pratchaya Phinthong
The Organ of Destiny

Between 1964 and 1973 some 2.5 million tons of bombs were dropped by American armed forces in Laos. Even today, unexploded ordnance continues claiming around fifty Laotian victims each year.

For the past four years, Pratchaya Phinthong has been working with the inhabitants of the village of Napia, transforming bomb debris into elements of an artistic project that supports a local community living in permanent insecurity. Each sold work pays a contribution to the village and to the NGO which helps de-mining and cultivating the land recovered from bombs.

The Organ of Destiny, the title of Pratchaya Phinthong's latest exhibition in gb agency, brings together the stories of villagers from the Plains of Jars and the ghosts of the Vietnam War, from the minefields and forests of Laos to Paris.

The exhibition space is a place of transformation, from one form, function and medium, to another. Either through recreation or reuse, the works explore the capacity of the materials to arouse certain tensions between notions of presence and absence, beauty and horror, usefulness and artifice.