Chronicle Staff February 1, 2021Updated: February 4, 2021, 7:06 am
Jiab Prachakul ‘Stand-by,’ 2020 Photo: Jiab Prachakul, Courtesy of Friends Indeed Gallery
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First Jiab Prachakul show ‘14 Years’ comes to Friends Indeed Gallery
Jiab Prachakul’s highly anticipated first-ever American exhibition, “14 Years,” comes to the Friends Indeed Gallery this month.
Prachakul, the winner of the 2020 BP Portrait Award, was born in Nakhon Phanom, a small town on the Mekong River in northeast Thailand. The artist became interested in portraiture and art after moving to England and viewing an exhibition of David Hockney’s work.
Current projects: “The Lost Art of Dreaming,” including “The Dictionary of Joy and Pleasure” (micro-commissions to 10 artists seeking a source of pleasure for every letter of the alphabet); “Video Postcard” series
“Our most recent project, ‘Boys in Trouble,’ did sharpen focus and shift direction upon the election of the last administration. The emboldening of white supremacy and specifically proudly anti-trans, transphobic values and strategic planning by the administration meant that I really wanted our project to stand up and speak back to that.
“(‘The Lost Art of Dreaming’) also is informed by living through this last administration. We had very little time to dream or imagine or feel joy or pleasure. It felt really important and radical to begin the project during that administration to of course continue organizing, educating and fighting back but also to claim the importance of joy and pleasure and dreaming in our lives.”