Performance Lecture: terra australis incognita

Join us for the premiere showing of a new performance lecture by Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai for the exhibition A Moment in Extended Crisis, curated by Andy Butler.

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai’s terra australis incognita (2024) is a newly commissioned performance lecture that considers the artist's immigrant journey, in parallel with their great grand uncle's historical journey into exile and the yearning for discovery of a new place without the violence of conquest.

This performance builds off research and previous works into Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai’s great grand uncle Pridi Banomyong, who was a leader of the 1932 revolution that shifted Thailand from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy. Pridi went on to be a statesman in the pro-democracy People’s Party, with a career holding various ministerial roles, including a 6-month stint as prime minister. A pro-monarchy coup in 1947 and subsequently a failed attempted pro-democracy coup in 1949 led Pridi into living in exile for the rest of his life.

Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai has similarly lived outside of Thailand since shortly after their birth, with contemporary coups and revolutionary fervour continuing between pro-monarchist and pro-democracy groups. In these performances, Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai travels from place to place, their luggage packed with books about this political history, with their own experience of movement and exile mirroring the later experiences of their great grand uncle. terra australis incognita is made for their first visit to Australia, where they continues to try and make sense of carrying such a legacy during a contemporary moment of revolution.

About the artist:

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a Thai transdisciplinary artist, curator and art worker, currently based in the United States. Recent projects include Stranger Intimacy I & II, at the ONE Archives at USC Libraries and USC Pacific Asia Museum (LA), REWIND: a virtual screening series, Feminist Center for Creative Work (LA), Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, The Fulcrum Press (LA), Excerpts of Memories From the Screen, and BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, Bangkok City Gallery. They curated the MAHA Pavilion at the Bangkok Biennial 2020 and Tactics of Erasure and Rewriting Histories at Craft Contemporary in 2022 and at ReflectSpace Gallery at the Glendale Central Library in 2023. The New Commons is their online project for the 2023 Prospect Art Curatorial Fellowship. They received a Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole, a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, a BFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and a MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. They are a recipient of the California Arts Council 2023 Individual Artist Fellowship Award. 

Learn more about Prima.

About the exhibition:

A Moment in Extended Crisis, curated by Andy Butler, brings together artists who track histories and contemporary resonances of movement and migration that occur against the backdrop of large scale political upheaval.

The artists in this exhibition approach and process the intimate and personal worlds that are left in the long shadows of revolution, military interventions, exile, and emigration to the west. The exhibition asks how we carry these legacies across time and space, and how our current political worlds hold the traces of individual and collective experience.

International and intergenerational in scope, A Moment in Extended Crisis will premiere work in Australia from Jane Jin Kaisen, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, and Isaac Chong Wai, alongside new commissions and recent and historic works from Australian artists Nathan Beard, Sarah Ujmaia, and John Young.

Learn more about the exhibition.