Floating World

Through encounters with Ukiyo-e, Japanese Woodblock Prints and Paintings produced between 17th-20th Century, I became interested in the colourful and beautifully crafted pictures of courtesan, kabuki, theatre, geisha, sumo wrestlers, teahouses, shops, folklores, festivals and landscape, in the other words, the pictures of transient pleasure and entertainment of everyday life free from the concern of the world. The concept of the floating world, as “Ukiyo” can actually be translated as, implies the belief that the world is evanescent and transitory, and the present reality is ephemeral, which is how I perceive the world to be. As a person who was born and raised in Thailand, I am strongly influenced by Buddhism. I believe that things always change, and so does the world that we live in. It is momentary and absolutely impermanent. Every moment is fleeting, thus exist only here and now.

From Ukiyo-e pictures, I created my own mini world as a mean to temporarily escape from the real world. I build the models of the same scene twice, once in white colour and another in black to psychologically play with subconscious level of mind. If things change only for a little bit, the total atmosphere and mood will shift accordingly too. Therefore, the photographs would open up a different meaning for different people. Also, people are purposely taken out from the image and the scenes are lit up to evoke certain emotion and represent certain time of the day or season in order to emphasize the fleetingness of time, which the beauty can be enjoyed and the emotion can be felt only at the moment. I purposely combined miniatures, color, and light together in order to make it look real at the first glance but, I leave in flaws that indicate that it is a construction, just like in a dream. When I wake up in the morning I wonder if I dreamt in my imagination or if I experienced another reality, and sometimes it takes a long time to find the answer.