JAKKAI SIRIBUTR: THERE’S NO PLACE

15 November 2024 – 16 March 2025, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK

A textile structure composed of assorted garments that seem to be embracing each other is suspended from the ceiling at the Whitworth Gallery; they are garlanded in pearl necklaces, and on the rug beneath lie scattered pearls that have broken free from the strands above Broadlands. Jakkai Siributr is known for his work that addresses the political and social issues that face his homeland, Thailand, but also increasingly for his pieces that reflect on his personal history. In Jakkai Siributr: There’s No Place, he combines the two strands, showing how the political and social affect the lives of all, including the great and the good. 

His family were part of that great and good. In 1932, his grandparents were sent to England to accompany the recently abdicated King Rama VII. They had to leave their two youngest of four daughters behind in Thailand; Siributr’s mother was four months old. World War II intervened, postponing their reunion for 12 years. Arriving in the UK, Siributr’s 13-year-old mother, unable to speak English, felt alienated. Ignored at a reception at Broadlands, the home of the Mountbattens, she fiddled with her pearl necklace: it snapped, scattering the pearls, causing a sensation. This event is remembered in the eponymous new work on display made of clothes that belonged to Siributr’s now-deceased mother and aunt, garments that he has been unable to throw away.  “It’s about the life, the stories, and the history of the women I grew up with, but also how their history intersects with national history,” he says. “Deep down, the work is really about memory, losses, and grief. As I get older, I’m contemplating these memories and how one passes the memories to the next generation.”

He pursues this theme in Matrilineal’s five heavily beaded quilts, each depicting one of the five women in his life, manifesting their spirit of resilience and female solidarity. They reference thangkas (Buddhist fabric mosaics), including one owned by his grandmother. Each beaded portrait includes symbols of each woman’s interests, the most detailed that of his mother, surrounded by exotic flowers embroidered on the Liberty fabric that she loved, the least, surrounded by plants, his oldest aunt, who was murdered by her gardener. On each border are heavily embroidered village houses and ships, including the one that brought the family back to Thailand.

The family faced further turmoil when Siributr’s great uncle, falsely accused of the murder of King Ananda, was executed. His seven unmarried daughters brought up with Siributr’s mother’s family, faced extreme hostility, which manifested in Sompong. An inverted Burmese beaded panel belonging to the oldest daughter, who committed suicide, is surrounded by black feathers and glittery black beading that almost conceal photos of the daughters taken by their father. “This embroidery is like looking through the lens of their father. It’s very upsetting because you’re looking at these old photographs and seeing a proud man in uniform with his family,” he says. “They didn’t realise what the fates had in store.” 

Siributr stresses that these seemingly overprivileged women had to deal with personal tragedy, yet each felt obliged to give back to society in a positive way. Siributr pursues this family ethos by documenting Thailand’s underrepresented people in other works. During COVID-19, he created three new hangings made from uniforms purchased from tourist service workers who suddenly had no income. “They weren’t getting social benefits, financial assistance, so I gave them money for their redundant work clothes,” he says. The brightly orange Airborne is composed of masks he made from the high-vis vests of motorcycle taxi drivers, the blue LD20 from taxi drivers’ uniforms, and the green BC20 from Bangkok street sweepers’ uniforms. The latter two were embellished with amulets. “This indicates how people use these talismanic objects now because they have lost faith in government, relying instead on supernatural beliefs and going to temples to ask for prosperity,” he says. 

This lack of control and the poor government is explored further in a 10-metre scroll of 12 heavily beaded panels, each representing a month in 2018 in Thailand, post-military dictatorship, leading up to a planned election. Corrupt politicians, army generals, and calamitous events like the 12 young footballers trapped in a flooded underground cave are depicted in dense embroidery. (Elon Musk is portrayed. He called a British rescuer a “paedophile” when his help was rejected.)

Siributr is driven to political comment but in a disingenuously gentle way. In his hands, embroidery is a powerful, subtle tool. In Changing Rooms, he investigates religious and ethnic conflicts in Thailand’s southern border, which the government now overhypes for political reasons. Visitors are invited to try on a series of externally embroidered camouflage military jackets and internally embroidered Muslim-Malay skullcaps (songkoks), revealing scenes from the conflict zone. “To a Buddhist population, a military jacket means security and trust,” he says. “For Muslim communities, it means the opposite, which is threats and danger. Traditionally worn by Muslim men, the songkoks attract suspicions from the authorities. I want them to provoke questions.”

Siributr continues: “Thailand has great potential. I investigate why we are in such a static state that we are afraid to change. I started going back and reading a lot of history, and the themes I've chosen come from my ignorance. I wanted to know more, so it forced me to research.” He encourages rather than forces visitors to know more. They become intrigued by the embroidery and find themselves involved in a different world.

Indeed, he is keen to engage visitors in further work. There’s No Place is a series of hangings made by young stateless people in Koung Jor Shan Refugee Camp that looks at displacement, home, and belonging. Visitors are invited to add their own embroidery in a series of workshops. This work is the least seductive, but it is a work in progress. Siributr often uses collaborative projects to engage minds; he has a team of 10 working on his ideas at home. In some instances, like the works about his family, he embroiders everything himself; in other less personal, more obviously political pieces, he outlines the design to be embroidered by his team. 

He disliked being called a textile artist for a long time, but it’s now a title he embraces. “I realised that there are a lot of people in Thailand who suffer, especially the ones in marginalised communities,” he says “Being in Thailand, working with textiles, and being a gay artist, I also feel very marginalised. So I think that’s why I understand some aspects of it.”

This is a powerful and beautiful show. Each work draws the viewer in. The embroidery is highly skilled and immensely powerful. Those disinclined to know more about the politics and social situations Siributr portrays can just revel in the beauty, the colour, the pattern, ornamentation and skill, and even, in some instances, the blinginess. Those enticed into knowing more are learning in a gentle but compelling way about life and politics. Embroidery speaks.

Text by Corinne Julius

Installation images courtesy of Jakkai Siributr and The Whitworth Art Gallery