Jakkai Siributr's 'Displaced' Exhibition Confronts Religious Conflict and Refugee Crisis at Bangkok Art & Culture Centre

Thai textile artist Jakkai Siributr presented his solo exhibition 'Displaced' at Bangkok Art & Culture Centre from 1 April to 13 May 2017. Curated by Iola Lenzi, the show featured three installations addressing religious and ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia. The exhibition included 'Changing Room' (2017), where military camouflage jackets embroidered with scenes from Thailand's Muslim insurgency-stricken deep south and white Muslim-Malay skullcaps with violent imagery invited visitors to dress up and take selfies. Another installation, '78' (2014), paid tribute to 78 male Muslim protesters who died in the Tak Bai incident of October 2004 in Narathiwat province, featuring a black fabric cube with 78 white kurta tunics laid on bamboo bunks. The third work, 'The Outlaw's Flag' (2017), displayed 21 imagined flags embroidered with seeds and beads, blending symbols from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Thailand, accompanied by documentary footage of the Rohingya refugee journey from Sittwe in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Siributr, a practicing Buddhist, used hand stitching, appliqué, and domestic craft techniques to explore themes of displacement, ethnocentrism, and the perception of 'the other.' The exhibition resulted from months of ethnographic research and marked his first solo show focusing on issues outside the experience of most metropolitan Thais.