Rattana Salee Biography

Rattana Salee was born in 1982 and is currently studying an MFA in Sculpture at Silpakorn Univeristy. Marking her debut solo exhibition in Shell(Shocked), the atmospheric sculptural installation comprises metal and plaster architectural structures that reflect the private and communal complexities of urban living. Evidence of supposed progress, the Thai capital has become one vast construction site. The builder's raucous rattle of drill and hammer shakes almost every street and soi in the city, while inhabitants seek mental and spiritual solace in the claustrophobic rectangular stacks they call home. Within such domestic confines occupants establish individual expressions as refuge, yet the world beyond continues to infiltrate. Attempting a personal connection with the geographic, social, and psychological framework of the cityscape, Rattana's haunting sculpted frames evoke the hundreds of decaying, incomplete towers that still pierce the capital's skyline, residues of economic fallout from the 1997 financial crisis. Skeletons to human abandon, her lineal steel carcasses are also potent epitaphs to Bangkok's recent street turmoil, which left burnt down buildings as disturbing reminders to the fragility of an expanding megalopolis.