Doing fieldwork in an acrylic hell: mediations between personhood, art and ethnography in a Thai mural painting

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore how my scholarly training as an anthropologist informs the way I produce and understand what I do as a traditional Thai temple muralist. Thinking about personhood and context in the process of temple mural painting forges a new reading of murals as ethnographic texts that weave together diverse narrative content, fictional moments and experiential threads. The process of painting temple murals are, like the ethnographic works anthropologists build, a space through which multiple dialogues are encountered, referenced and negotiated. Using anthropology to think about my art practice in a Thai Buddhist temple outside of Thailand, I show how traditional Thai mural artists did not just paint scenes rich in historical and mythical meaning but were (and continue to be) shaped by the audiences who view their intricate and colourful creations. Mural painting, I conclude, is ethnography-in-process. Mural painters like anthropologists, constantly reflect on their art practice as a text sans words, in a dialectical process of entangled agencies as they spin tales of pasts, presents and futures in vivid hues on the walls of Buddhist temples.

KEYWORDS:

• Murals
• Buddhism
• reflexivity
• anthropology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Irving Chan Johnson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies in the National University of Singapore. Trained as an anthropologist, Professor Johnson's research focusses on the Thai community of Malaysia as well as on Thai traditional art and its producers. He is a practicing Thai mural painter and teaches classes on anthropology, Thai art and dance.

Notes

1 In popular Thai Theravada Buddhism, humans who committed the worst atrocities are reborn as hungry ghosts in one of the 13 levels of hell when they die. These ghouls suffer from an appetite that cannot be satiated due to their mouths being no larger than a pin-hole.

2 The Phra Malai story was often painted in Thai temples and on paper manuscripts (samut khoi) during the eighteenth and nineteenth century as part of a larger narrative detailing Buddhist ideas about death and dying. The story has lost favour amongst mural painters in Thailand today who prefer scenes from the life of the Buddha (Brereton 1986, 1995).

3 Hindu statues (deities and ascetics) are common in Thai Buddhist religious art. Wat Uttamayanmuni has three such statues, the Hermit (resi), Phra Rahu (the god of eclipses of the sun and moon) and a large statue of Brahma …  On Hindu iconography in Thai Theravada Buddhism, see McDaniel (2013).

4 Singapore's population of some four million people is comprised largely of Chinese, Malays and Tamils. In the 2010 census, Buddhists made up 33% of the country's religious demographic.

5 Thai mural painters are often paid for the projects and many use their artistic skills as a means to generate an income. Payment is usually calculated as per square meter of wall space.

6 In this paper, I refer to Thai mural artists by the masculine pronoun as most were and are, men, although there are no taboos against women painters.

7 Paintings in northern Thailand for instance were shaped by Burmese and Shan sensibilities due to the region's long history of cross-cultural interaction with these polities. In Thailand's deep south, with its predominantly Malay Muslim population, old Buddhist murals show visible traces of Malay artistic genius. On the Lao-influenced murals of Northeast Thailand, see Samosorn (1989) and Brereton and Yenchuay (2010).

8 Brereton and Yenchuay (2010, 53) documented an artist's self-portrait on the wall of Wat Sanuan Wari in Northeast Thailand's Khon Khaen province. I noticed a similar type portrait with a corresponding signature at Wat Mahathat in Phetchaburi province. Cate (2003) has pointed out realistic artist portraits at Wat Budhapadipa in Wimbledon. It should be noted, however, that these are recently painted murals, dating from the mid-twentieth century and later.

9 Some mural painters and traditional artists in Thailand have written their own books as well. However, these are primarily confined to art manuals (tamra lai thai) that provide text-book guidelines to drawing and painting traditional Thai forms and figures.

10 Very few ethnographies have been produced by anthropologists who are also artists. Jazz musician Steve Feld's work on the Kaluli combined his personal interests in music with research on the culture of sound in Papua New Guinea. Ossman’s (2010) more recent discussion on art ethnography and war showcased how her paintings reflected ethnographic concerns with media movements in Morocco. See also Hiller (1996).

11 Writing of recent trends in dance scholarship, Buckland (2006, 13) notes that, ‘the researcher's own movement experiences become part of the means of comparative analysis … the “I” persona as a source, dancing and reflecting on sensation and meaning, has produced a significant extension and alternative to earlier objective modes of practice’.

12 Traditional Thai depictions of hell often include illustrations of the thorny ngiu tree. The souls of men and women who had committed sexual misconduct (adultery, rape, etc.) were forced to climb the tree repeatedly only to be attacked by vultures and ferocious dogs.

13 A number of contemporary Thai mural painters have incorporated non-Thai images in their works, the most popular being Chalermchai Kosipipat's images of superheroes and the 2011 destruction of the New York's World Trade Center on the walls of Wat Rongkhun in Chiang Rai. The young artist Rakkiat Lerdjitsakul has created a name for himself in Thailand's artworld today by incorporating pop images of cartoon characters like Doraemon, Angry Birds and Ben Ten into Buddhist narratives. His work at Wat Sapha-siew in Suphanburi province has made the temple a local attraction for curious tourists.

14 The depiction of so-called contemporary figures like world leaders in the Wimbledon murals reflects an older practice in Thai painting of depicting the Other in visual form. See Peleggi (2012) on the depiction of French and Muslims in Thai art of the Ayutthaya and early Bangkok period.

15 Osama bin Laden was inserted into the painting only after he was killed by US forces in 2011 as I added the finishing touches to my mural. I had wanted to include him in the art work earlier but as he was still alive it did not make sense to have him in the Netherworld.