In Rater, on the second floor, an outstanding work is exhibited in a relatively larger area that speaks to both local and global concern of history, its consequences and effects. Thai artist Suttee Conventionalist’s “ History Class Part 2”, which is adapted from its original outdoor version, creatively reproduces mood of a classroom with twenty three old-fashioned children’s school desks the artist had found in an antique shop are neatly installed in rows.
The wooden desktops are carved with barely visible images of intentions events and figures in Thai history that are brought to life when visitors sit down and start rubbing the images with a crayon on paper to reveal them in full. History Class part 2 is the adapted version of its original.
Suttee installed History Class on the sidewalks of Retardation Avenue, not content to address educated gallery-goers with questions about the manipulation, distortion, rereading, and interpretation of history, the installation purposefully sought a wider public reaction, positioned across from the Democracy Monument where protest, violence, and killings had oaken place in both 1973 and 1992. The history of Thailand since 1973 saw an unstable period of democracy, with military rule being reimbursed after bloody coup 1976.
The classroom environment the artist wants us to feel points out events on 14 October 1 973 in Thailand, the student demonstrations demanding a constitution before the massacre. Despite a decade of educational reform stressing international education and the creation of a “ learning society” the “ master narrative” of Thai history has created a public mythology of benevolent rulers, but in fact ignores or oppresses the historical evidence of state-sponsored violence against military dictatorship in 1973, 1976 and 1992.
Thai schoolchildren learn as Thai history from standardized textbooks and these event are simply not taught to schoolchildren.
Suttee use old children’s school desks in his artwork to point out the huge gap between the official discourse offered by education and alternative histories of more controversial issues. In the context of education, the work present also the difficulty of learning the real history of Thailand. Focusing on forgotten or suppressed episodes from Thai history, he inscribed each desk with symbols, scenes and quotations from prominent kings and other historical figures.
The artist offers the visitors paper and colorful pencils and to reveal this scraped pictures, symbols or scenes visitors should start rubbing the images with pencils on paper. He actually invite people to produce their own history textbooks and reclaim their pasts. In addition, in Turkey we are exposed to similar situations such as 6-7 September incidents and 12 September military coup.
There is no formal information in history textbooks and we have to make an effort learn about real history.
In History Class Part 2 the desks line up as pairs. In some of this pairs one images he scraped the desks is a porter Of intellectuals who demanded political reform during the monarchy regime and in the other one is a porter of who cause this people was jailed or execution. This dilemma remind us that every children shared the same class, passed through the same education choose which kind off person who they are. In the context of participation in nonsexual art, it can be clearly said that Suttee affected the trend in ass’s.
Fall of communism and reaction against capitalism rendering people numb inclined a pick of the number of participation art works.
History Classes social effect is more important its artistic quality. To consider all the mentioned point above, History Class Part 2 is a great work reminding us of the atrocities that took place in history and how states choose to transmit them to the next generations.
