Solo exhibition.
RCB Galleria 5, 3rd Floor, River City Bangkok.
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“Ee Nong, isn’t flying scary?”
It was one of the questions my grandmother asked me most often.
She was a bit like a bird. She went wherever the wind took her, sometimes with a plan, sometimes not. A single mother from Lampang who chewed betel nut, fought through life with everything she had, yet somehow never missed her regular perm. Her floral pha sin skirts were always bright, her curls always perfect. No matter what life threw at her, she never seemed particularly afraid. As she’d say, “Pain never gets close to the heart.”
Turns out, I’m more like her than I ever realised. I drift wherever the wind takes me too. My hair is a lot messier, but our love for loud floral clothes is exactly the same.
I grew up on banana blossom curry fritters, nam prik noom, and pork belly she kept putting on my plate. Before I knew it, our roles had quietly switched. I was feeding her instead. Bathing her. Scratching her back. Helping her to the bathroom. Tucking her into bed. I spent almost eight years looking after her.
Our relationship tasted a bit like kaeng ho, a northern Thai stew that somehow throws everything into one pot. Sweet. Bitter. Funny. Infuriating. Comforting. Occasionally enough to drive both of us mad.Until then, I’d never thought of what I was doing as labour. It happened at home, and it happened for someone I loved. But the longer I did it, the more I wondered why some kinds of work are called duty, gratitude, or simply part of everyday life, even though they demand time, skill, effort, and can change another person’s life just as much as any other job.
There are countless invisible caregivers like me. People who devote their lives to caring for others, through cooking, cleaning, intimacy, raising children, or looking after ageing family members.This exhibition is my flight log. It’s made up of fragments of memory: homesickness, the private jokes between a grandmother and her granddaughter, Lorde’s Solar Power featuring an imaginary collaboration with Charan Manophet, anxious hours outside the emergency room of a public hospital, and the bright Hawaiian dress I wore to my grandmother’s funeral because that’s what she wanted.My only regret is that by the time I could finally afford to take her on a plane, she was already too old to fly.
So, to answer the question you kept asking me...
No, Grandma. Flying isn’t that scary.
And if there is another life, I hope we find each other again, not just as grandmother and granddaughter, but as best friends, somewhere with a kinder welfare system.
Love,
Juli b
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