LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- SculptureCenter presents Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, the Thai artist's first retrospective in the United States.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (born 1957 in Trat, Thailand) is one of the most prominent artists working in Southeast Asia. The exhibition will showcase over 20 artworks spanning two decades of the artist's career, and will include video, sculpture, photography, and some of her better-known works, as well as those that have rarely been viewed, especially in the United States. Rasdjarmrearnsook is also producing new sculptures for the exhibition.

Working with psychologically rich materials, Rasdjarmrearnsook considers a wide range of subjects that have existed in marginal spaces, including women, the deceased, the insane, and animals. She creates complex narratives that confront societal structures of power and pedagogy. Concerned with systems of language and communication, Rasdjarmrearnsook makes earnest attempts to converse with subjects who don't speak in languages that are comprehended or even acknowledged by mainstream society.

The exhibition will present video works, including both The Class and Conversation series, where Rasdjarmrearnsook conducts discussions with corpses. Also included is Village and Elsewhere: Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holofernes, Jeff Koons' Untitled, and Thai Villagers (2011), a video in which a Buddhist monk leads a comical conversation about these two Western paintings in a temple. A more recent group of works featured focuses on the status of dogs in Thai culture and beyond. The exhibition will premiere a new series of sculptures, each a portrait of the stray dogs that Rasdjarmrearnsook cares for in her home and at Chiang Mai University, where she teaches.

For the past 25 years, Rasdjarmrearnsook’s videos and installations have been regularly shown throughout the world. Rasdjarmrearnsook represented Thailand at the Venice Biennale (2005) and has been featured in many international exhibitions including dOCUMENTA (13) (2013), the Sydney Biennale (2010), the Gwangju Biennale (2006), the Istanbul Biennial (2003), the Johannesburg Biennial (1995), and the Carnegie International (2004). Rasdjarmrearnsook is also a respected professor in Thailand's leading art program at Chiang Mai University, where she has recently spearheaded one of the first media and theory departments in the country.

The exhibition is curated by Ruba Katrib, SculptureCenter Curator.