The Mirror

Born and currently living in Thailand, Pinaree Sanpitak’s work is quiet, abstract and spiritual in character – traits which bear the influence of the artist’s education in Japan. In the years following the birth of her son in 1993, the female breast became one of the main motifs of her work, often associated with the iconic forms of the Buddhist stupa (temple) and offering bowl. Despite the feminist stance and influences of Buddhist philosophy and culture which her works unequivocally assume, Sanpitak avoids any kind of definition, preferring instead a free and multi-layered communication through fundamental elements such as forms, colours and textures.

For her work titled "Mirror", Pinaree Sanpitak has directed her attention towards apprehending the body as a container that stores our physical and spiritual existence while also allowing us to coexist with the world and nature. The artist placed a mirror inside a shallow, bowl-shaped, silver-framed aluminium cast. The work, displayed either leaning against a wall or placed flat on the floor, takes the abstraction of the female breast to an even higher level. Comprising powerful references to femininity and the mirror phase expounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis, the work points to such processes as the emergence of the very first image and the formation of subjectivity. In stark contrast to the symbolic void often encountered in the artist’s previous works, Mirror is full of reflections, shadows and depths of the world.