Natee Utarit – Your Past is My Future

Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 with the solo presentation of Thai artist; Natee Utarit. The artist will be showing recent works, comprising of 7 oil paintings on canvas.

With the exhibition “Your past is my future”, Natee Utarit continues his investigation of the relationship between European colonialism and Southeast Asian culture. If in the previous pictorial cycles, Utarit focused his attention on the dynamics through which the West has exerted its influence both on the style and on the art of Southeast Asia, with these new paintings he looks at the common aspects of different cultures. At the base of the new cycle of works, there is the awareness that it is possible to give new life to one’s own culture starting from the aspects shared with different cultures with a glorious past. The unreleased series of paintings “Your past is my future” addresses the relationship among individuals in a less pessimistic way than the previous cycles: “We tend to be wary of our neighbours,” writes Utarit at this regard, “because the version of the story we learned has taught us to see people from other cultures as enemies or rivals. We think that our culture was created exclusively by our ancestors. We have never had the courage to accept that our customs and traditions may have been influenced or shaped by other cultural forces.”