Chapter 2: A Long Way Home Debut Solo Exhibition: Suwichada Busamrong-Press Reisig and Taylor Contemporary 2680 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034 Saturday, December 9, 5:30pm - 9pm This Saturday, December 9th, 5:30pm - 9pm, Reisig and Taylor Contemporary is hosting a Performance Screening and Conversation with Suwichada Busamrong-Press as part of her ongoing solo exhibition, Chapter 2: A Long Way Home. The Performance Screening begins at 6pm. The screening and talk will be followed by an Isaan celebration organized by the artist—with music, dance, and refreshments. The exhibition is on view through December 23, 2023. …. Adapting traditional techniques of labor, craft, writing, and medicine to contemporary practices of painting, sculpture, and performance, Suwichada’s work challenges (Western) art historical hierarchies of cultural production by disorienting normalized distinctions of work versus artwork. Her mixed-technique, mixed-tradition work reshapes the relations between economies of survival and celebration, combining Isaan Thai ancestral knowledges with her education in art and architecture at multiple institutions in the United States. Sewing canvases like she would when making her own clothes; sculpting pots that are (practically) used to produce food; refining turmeric extracts for pigments in the same way her grandfather made medicines; writing across the surfaces in all the languages she inhabits; and working on the ground, “washing” the textile canvases as if she were cleaning or dying a garment. All of these processes are seamlessly incorporated into her fine art practice. Craft, medicine, labor, ritual, painting, writing, and sculpture are synchronized through her work. The work (of art) produces the artwork. Translating memory and the past into new media processes, Suwichada’s video-recorded performances reincarnate ancestral rituals, musical rites, and cleansing practices performed by her grandfather, a traditional healer in her community. These works’ fluid transitions between present, past, and future—between the digital and (the assumed past of) the traditional—repair repressive and violent breakdowns in (art) historical relations between indigenous or local modes of cultural production and Western-industrial or global techniques of “fine” art. | “My work evokes a passage through a long journey to find myself. Each piece is born from a reverence for my ancestors and the simple beautiful life with nature they cultivated. Through a combination of abstract forms, I explore how traditional cultures and values connect to new ideas of modern living. I am influenced by my Northeast Thai roots and the vibrant colors of my dialect culture, emphasizing spontaneity while also connecting to the emotive quality of each form. I hope that these stories can be experienced in a way that reminds us of the subtleties and nuances of our history.” | Suwichada Busamrong-Press (b. 1975 in Khonkean, Thailand) is a Thai-American artist based in Los Angeles, California. She is an interdisciplinary artist who begins by recalling her memories in writings and transfers them into paintings, sculpture, and performance. Suwichada earned her B.F.A. in interior design and fiber from the College for Creative Studies and her M.Arch. in architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art (both in Detroit). She received her M.F.A. from Otis College of Art and Design in 2023. Her work has been presented in various group shows around the country, including: Detroit, New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles. | Image (Still): Suwichada Busamrong-Press Self Healing 2023