<< If there is a place where I can show that this is where I come from, I suppose this would be the place. I am struck by such rootedness and yet, we struggle to find a home. How did my parents and I become so wayward? We are, I suppose, at home in the World unlike countless migrants who are at home nowhere. Our privilege translates into our ability to transcend borders. The politics of exile: one asks the world to welcome you when your country of origin has closed itself from you. >> _ _ Book Release (06/14/2025) This Saturday, June 14, 4pm - 7pm, the gallery is holding a Book Release for "174 / Neung Jed Si - A Short History of Thailand" by Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (Los Angeles: Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, 2025). The release of this publication coincides with their eponymous solo exhibition currently on view at the gallery. This book-form print publication includes a photographically illustrated narrative by Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, along with an introductory essay by the gallery’s author, Z.B. The print publication is issued in a Limited Edition of 50 books. (At the moment, there are still a few remaining editions available. Email the gallery directly to place an order.) << “The other is in a condition of perpetual departure, of journeying; the other is, by vocation, migrant, fugitive.”  One trudges on in one’s journey, half-heartedly, but with the hope that the path taken will take them back to their loved one.  Barthes claims that the lover is the one who is left behind, the one who creates fantasm based on the absence of the beloved. I beg to differ. From my own experience and the experience of my father, whose letters are the sole letters remaining- somehow, or perhaps better hidden are my mother’s replies to him, the migrant suffers from lovesickness and longing for the beloved who is left behind and sings songs of their praises in their absence.  “Isn’t the letter the very symbol of loneliness? The Writer. Alone at his writing desk. The farewell letter. The love letter. The yellow envelope one sticks down and entrusts to its fate. Letters aren't written to relieve loneliness, but to seal it.” >> __________________________________________________ Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (b. Bangkok, Thailand) is a transdisciplinary artist, curator and art worker, currently based in St Paul, Minnesota. They received a Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole and a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They hold a BFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and a MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. In 2024, their solo exhibition, Pridi in Paris opened at The Fulcrum Press, in Los Angeles. Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, in exhibitions at the ONE Archives at USC Libraries and USC Pacific Asia Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Artists’ Television Access, San Francisco, CA; UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia; esea contemporary, Manchester, UK; CAPC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, France, among others. They participated in the Arizona Biennial 2015 at the Tucson Museum of Art. They held live and online performative lectures at Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA; Marathon Screenings, Los Angeles, CA; Summer University, Performing Arts Forum, Saint Erme-Outre-et-Ramecourt, France; BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, BANGKOK CITY CITY GALLERY, among others. Their curatorial projects involve cross-cultural collaborations between artists working in different parts of the world. For MAHA Pavilion at the Bangkok Biennial 2020, Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai paired artists in the West with performance artists in Bangkok who enacted their score across various sites in the city. Tactics of Erasure and Rewriting Histories, at Craft Contemporary in 2022 and ReflectSpace Gallery in the Glendale Central Library in 2023, features artists with marginalized identities working with erasure methods to counter official narratives of history. The New Commons, for Prospect Art Curatorial Fellowship, is a series of online screenings, virtual live collaborations and discussions around the imaginaries of the homeland as they are shaped by digital communication technologies. Their works have appeared in publications, such as Hyperallergic, Carla, Artillery Magazine and the Performance Art Journal and Thai online media, such as the101.world and [BOOKMARK MAGAZINE], an initiative of BANGKOK CITY CITY GALLERY. They received the SOMA Summer Award to attend the SOMA residency in Mexico City in 2016 and was awarded the California Arts Council 2023 Individual Artist Fellowship. {Biographical information courtesy of the artist.} Image: "My Father Ruminates on the Origin of Love" 2025 Image transfers approximately 96 x 48 inches