"The Two Planets Series" is a humorous illustration of cultural differences between East and West, and the weight of education and social context when dealing with them. In this work started in 2007, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook records films of Thai villagers faced with four major French masterpieces of the 19th century reproduced in the original size: Edouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (1863), Vincent Van Gogh’s Siesta (1889-90), Jean-François Millet’s Glaneuses (1857), and Auguste Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette (1876). The unsophisticated villagers express their feelings with such extraordinary freedom that you can’t help but smile. In this work, Araya is in not making fun of them, but rather demonstrating that we may have lost our innocence and spontaneity in the face of Art.
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook lives and works in Chiangmai. Born in Trad in 1957, she is considered to be one of the finest Thai artists of her generation. Her versatile work deals with such diversified subjects as Femininity, Morality, the weight of Culture and Tradition, and the link between Life and Death. Araya participated in the 51st Venice Biennale in the Thai pavilion in 2005 and in the 17th Sydney Biennale. In 2008, "The Two Planet Series" was shown in Gimpel Gallery in London, and in October 2011, 100Tonson Gallery in Bangkok presented "Village and Elsewhere", which can be considered to be the continuation of "The Two Planet Series". In this last exhibition, Araya invites Thai villagers to a Buddhist temple to comment on contemporary art works by Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman.
