“Almost Nature,” the exhibition by Anon Chaisansook and Tammarat Kittiwatanokun, is an end result of a project by the two artists who set out to explore the history and fictions that are specific to a place.

In mid-2017, Chaisansook and Kittiwatanokun started visiting the zoo in Bangkok regularly to observe the micro-narratives at the place. The intimate details — be them from the varied styles of garden decors, or in the taxidermy museum with realistic dioramas, to a bunker from the Greater East Asia War era that was later turned into a Serow menagerie — all exhibited the period and time the zoo had withstood.

The layering narratives from the past that remain connected to today’s events and contemporary Thai history leave the zoo anachronistic and suspended in time, forming a pasteurized ecosystem, or a world within itself.

The artists gathered information by taking photographs, interviewing zookeepers, and collecting raw samples. Using what is left of the memories — those of the site and of the individuals — the artists created artworks ranging from photography and small-sized sculptures to video art and fake souvenirs, all of which will be on display at the exhibition.

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“Almost Nature” is not an attempt to memorialize the place or the past, but rather a personal interpretation on the subjects of the lifespan of a place, an institution, and history, as well as the simulated state paralleled to our realities.

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text by Pojai Akaratanakul