The performance is a personal history, based on the concept of ‘Home’, my background and my relationship with home.
When my mother was in her last stage of life in the hospital, a doctor told us that her condition, despite 90 years old, was sodium deficiency and it meant that she had to take regular salt in order to keep on living.
Another story was told by an old friend who used to live in the mountain, about when he was lost in the jungle, and he has not taken any salt for several days, which made him weak and nearly die. For all of us salt is an important chemical for our body, salt keeps our blood flow, keep our thought brighter, and our vision clearer, and keep our soil richer, etc.
Mountain salt was an important product of my home land, and I remembered the salt caravan arrived every morning at my village, when I was young … with rolls of cows carried salt baskets on their back, and the sound of cow bells singing through the dimly morning light, before the sun comes up.
Today salt village on the mountain top at my home land is still operating, as it has been for thousand of years.
Chumpon Apisuk (Thailand) was born on 7 November 1948 in Nan, a northern province in Thailand.
He studied Art At Changsilpa School, Silapakorn University / Bangkok and at the Museum School of Fine Arts / Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He also studied with Tang Chang a famous Thai contemporary poet/painter during 1968–70.
He is known for his activism in AIDS, Human Rights, and democracy. He also works with EMPOWER Foundation, which was founded by his partner Chantawipa Apisuk, an organization that advocates for the rights of sex workers in Thailand. He has continuously promoted performance art in Thailand since 80s and is a well-known performance artist in Asia. Since 1996, he has performed in Germany, England, Quebec, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Australia and the USA.
He founded Concrete House in 1993, an art and community space, and the only performance art venue in Thailand. He is also a founder and director of “Asiatopia — an International Performance Art Festival in Thailand”, since 1998. He is currently a member of the board of Bangkok Art & Culture Centre, in Bangkok.
His current project The Journey of Kumjing collaborates with his wife Chantawipa Noi Apisuk. It won the international art award “Freedom to Create Prize”. The project engages the migrant women community in the northern borders of Thailand and Myanmar.
