The Jim Thompson Art Center proudly presents for the first time in Thailand, PRIMITIVE, a solo exhibition by internationally renowned independent filmmaker and artist, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Commissioned by Haus Der Kunst, Munich, Germany in 2009, PRIMITIVE is a multidisciplinary art project, the result of a research trip which inspired the filmmaker to create, “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”. This film was premiered in France and received the prestigious Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. The Primitive project is about re-imagining an area of Thailand called Nabua, a small town in Nakornpanom, a place where memories and ideologies are extinct. It deals with time and spaces where memories of places were subdued and not remembered by the inhabitants due to the ideological and political conflicts of the cold war.

Primitive project was the result of Apichatpong’s research trip for the making of a new film. He visited a temple near his hometown where a monk gave him a little book called “A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” In it, the monk wrote about Boonmee, who could recall his multiple past lives in cities of Isan, the northeast Thailand. In 2008, the artist after traveling in the region in search of surviving offsprings and relatives wrote a screenplay inspired by the reincarnation of Boonmee. As a result he eventually developed three separate projects: Primitive, a multidisciplinary art project; CUJO, the book series and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the film.

Date: December 1, 2011 - February 29, 2012
Venue: The Jim Thompson Art Center (Kasemsan soi 2, Rama 1 Road, Patumwan, Bangkok)
For information please visit jimthompsonhouse.com/events/Primitive.asp
Tel: 02-612-6741, 02-219-2911