The Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) showcases the travelling exhibition of internationally acclaimed independent filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Palme d’Or 2010 recipient Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul opens his first solo exhibition in Manila at MCAD, entitled “The Serenity of Madness”. Curated by Gridthiya Gaweewong and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI) New York, the travelling exhibition features some of the acclaimed filmmaker’s works ranging across media from short films to video art, video diaries, prints, and archival material. 

Tatler Asia

The exhibition showcases the artist’s use of tradition and modernity which reveals his cinematic language of contrast and texture. Drawing inspirations from personal, national, cultural, historical, and mythical contexts, his works are marked by spirituality and the supernatural overshadowed by the political conflict in his region and country. In a way, these influences convey the internal logic of the filmmaker’s peculiar narrative that dissolves conventional ideas of beginning or end. It creates a thread of stories and images that leave the viewers with the imprint of a graceful yet fierce experience. 

Tatler Asia

For the past two decades, Weerasethakul’s reflexive and non-linear work has explored themes of faith, memory, and rebirth, often drawing upon narrative traditions of his native Isaan region. His stories reflect diverse literary and cinematic genres including science fiction, adventure, and myth, as well as the tradition of American experimental film. In both his narrativefilms and experimental projects, personal memories are interwoven with the ephemeral and the supernatural, evoking fluidity and distortions of history.

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Weerasethakul was born in 1970 at Bangkok but grew up in the northeastern Thai city of Kohn Kaen. He studied architecture there before graduating in film from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997, and currently lives and works in Chiang Mai. His film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, won the Palme d’Or at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Some of his works that can be seen in the exhibition at MCAD are Haiku, An Evening Shoot, Nabua, and Invisibility, which was a side-by-side installation of his two similar films Cemetery of Splendour and Fever Room.

The exhibition runs until May 14

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