Monuments for Solitude

Official contribution "Monuments for Solitude" to the Thailand Biennale 2018 in form of public art.

Telephones have been a groundbreaking invention connecting people separated by distance. The development of telephone booths made it possible for transit people to make phone calls. Currently, as smartphones have become the norm, these public phone booths, once ubiquitous points of connection, have become redundant. They are lonely relics of yesterday’s technology, particularly in remote areas where the cost for maintenance or removal is highly unaffordable.

Commissioned by Thailand Biennale 2018, this project addresses these “relics” in Krabi. The artist turns these obsolete booths into a space of contemplation by reinstalling these useless phone booths in a quiet area within natural sites, one on the beach of Poda Island and the other at the Than Bok Khorani National Park. The booths are not equipped with telephones, but with a pieces of petrified wood. As a fossil by nature, this mixture of wood and stone representing a de facto witness of time, replacing that generic object of communication with a mute, solemn subject for one to contemplate and to reconnect with themselves.