Kawita Vatanajyankur creates works that offer a powerful examination of the psychological, social and cultural ways of viewing and valuing the continuing challenges of women’s everyday labour. In her video performances, Vatanajyankur undertakes physical experiments that playfully, often painfully, test her body’s limits - a challenge that is both unavoidably compelling and uncomfortable to watch. The alluring, luminous colours in Vatanajyankur’s work are distinctive of the artist's aesthetic and tap into a globalized and digitally networked visual language of consumption and instant gratification.
Since then her work has developed to focus on the reality of labour that fuels today’s blind consumerism. From the food we eat to the clothes that we wear, the physical labour behind what we consume are given attention to through her uncomfortable and uncanny performative videos. Her upcoming solo show at Nova Contemporary marks the first time that this body of work will be seen by the public.
In 2015 she was a Finalist in the Jaguar Asia Pacific Tech Art Prize and curated into the prestigious Thailand Eye exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, London. In 2017, her work has been curated into 'Islands in the Stream' exhibition in Venice, Italy alongside the 57th Venice Biennale.
