Stars and Monsters

Neptune proudly presents ‘Stars and Monsters’ featuring works by Oscar Yik Long Chan, Yin-Ju Chen and Chulayarnnon Siriphol. The show gathers practices in which representations of the universe, celestial observations and approaches to astrology are implemented to unravel the monstrosity found in human behaviour and social violence in given contexts.

Yin-Ju Chen’s meticulous hand-drawn black and white charts are astrological depictions from her research on the alignment of planets that mark the exact start dates of political genocides and massacres. Her occult reading of the cosmos questions the inevitability of history and its astrological predictions. In the case of Chulayarnnon Siriphol, his film departs from religious iconography of the Tribhumi, the three levels of living statues representing the universe in Theravada Buddhism. The work cleverly exposes how this image, of the earthly and the celestial, mirrors the instrumentalization of myth in Thailand’s current delusional nationalism. On the other hand, instead of addressing a narrative on a given social body, Oscar Yik Long Chan’s ink drawings associates societal monstrosity with the seven chakras, the energy points inside one’s internal cosmology.