Vasan Sitthiket (Thailand)

Social and cultural concerns have been at the heart of Vasan Sitthiket’s work for over a generation. An artist working in all media, a poet, singer and leader of the registered political party The Artist Party, Sitthiket is a champion of people’s causes, believing in personal empowerment as the way to collective responsibility. Questioning orthodoxies, his is the most established anti-establishment artistic voice in Thailand today. Internationally exhibited, Sitthiket’s works are of particular relevance in the region today as they tackle so many of Thailand’s and Southeast Asia’s shared contemporary concerns – urbanisation, gender politics, environmental issues, political instability – with a universally understood expressive language. Born 1957 in Thailand, Sitthiket was educated at the College of Fine Arts, Bangkok.

Personally Speaking..

How do you approach your art making?
I make art to liberate me from suffering. I suffer as I live in a society in which I can’t participate. I refuse to be part of the herd following the idiot ruler. I use art as my weapon to speak out for the powerless. Art is a weapon to destroy all idiot-greedy powers. As an artist at least I can record our age and times. Life is so short but I still dream and hope to change injustice in the world. I love life and great mother nature so I hate all greedy governments whose rape of the people, plunder of the land, and exploitation-apartheid of the population force us to become part of the herd.

Who or what had the biggest influence on your artistic career?
My art teacher and my elder brother who awoke in me a love of art; my mother and grandma who taught me to love the poor and hate injustice; later on Vincent van Gogh who lit my fire, the great poet Chang Tang, the great revolutionary poet Jitr Phumisak, Joseph Beuys and DADA.

What inspires or motivates you in your creative pursuits?
The more I love my life, the more I hate idiot governments; the more I love mother earth, the more I love to change. The violence and destruction brought about faster and faster by capitalism drive me to create my art.

What do you love most about creating art?
I love painting and performance, I was perhaps born to be a medium. I want to shout in all sorts of media.

What is your favourite quote?
“Love is colder than death” and “I only want you to love me” from a Fassbinder film. “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed” from Mahatma Gandhi. “Property is theft” from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.