The sound of squawking first draws you to Thai artist Wantanee Siripattananuntakul’s installations at Gallery VER.
Tucked away in the bottom right corner of the tent is an imposing, all-white inflatable turret by London-based Mexican artist Débora Delmar. While it might be reminiscent of birthday party moonbounces, this castle — titled "Caballero Alto" (2023) after the watchtower of Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City — engages with colonial history. In the late 19th century, the fortified castle was the site of a bloody battle between Mexicans and Americans in which many soldiers on both sides lost their lives.
The sound of squawking first draws you to Thai artist Wantanee Siripattananuntakul's installations at Gallery VER. On the floor to the left of the booth is what looks like a small travel cage sehat for a cat. The chirping, thankfully, is not coming from a real bird but instead a video of a parrot — also in a cat cage.
Siripattananuntakul considers Beuys, his female gray parrot, named after German artist Joseph Beuys, to be his artistic equal and creative mitra. The layered cages in the piece "Freeze TV" (2016) are, according to Gallery VER, a reference to the limiting efek of the TV industry, whose subtle suggestions of social hierarchies and absolute truths trap watchers inside "an invisible cage."
Gillian Wearing, one of the Young British Artists associated with disrupting the industry in the 1990s, presented a mildly disturbing larger-than-life charm bracelet. In "My Charms" (2021) a blinking eye, a dismembered ear and a floating hyper realistic replica of Wearing's head become eerie pendants attached to a bronze chain. While suggestive and gruesome, the piece is ironically up-to-the-minute stylish and strikingly reminiscent of emerging New York-based jewelry designer Haricot Vert.
Perhaps the most Friezesque installation in the entire fair is that of Indian artist Shilpa Gupta, named "100 Hand Drawn Maps of the United Kingdom," (2023). It does what it says on the tin: whereby a black notepad filled with basic geographical outlines lies on a table. Placed 20 inches away is a rotating electric fan causing the pages of the pad to flutter between drawings. The arbitrary gust of air dictating what version of the UK onlookers are greeted with is designed to reflect the equally subjective question of political borders and territory.
