VER Room
Underground
Underground
by Mit Jai Inn
21/10 — 24/12/2023
Underground
Opening Reception: 21 October 2023, 18:00-21:00
Underground: Mit Jai Inn is the artist’s first exhibition made to be experienced in near-total darkness. Even the bright, brilliantly colored abstractions that comprise most of Mit Jai Inn’s oeuvre, however, operate in calculated ambiguity. His works unfold through evocative metaphors—tunnels, sunrises and sunsets, gifts—inviting each viewer on a unique journey into a future we are not yet conscious of. Underground buries us in a primordial cave: a space humans have historically used for imprisonment, rest, divination, and re-imaging the world outside. In the dim light, with our sight limited, we turn inward. We allow our eyes to adjust. We find that we can, in fact, see in the dark.
Curated by Ariana Chaivaranon, Underground: Mit Jai Inn—in conjunction with All Under Heaven: Ariana Chaivaranon—is a paired solo exhibition reflecting on the positionality of “under.”
The exhibitions emerging from this collaboration unfold from spaces “under”: places of inferiority, growth potential, surveillance, secrecy, hierarchy, rhizomatic networks, obedience, and fomenting revolution. Underground and All Under Heaven take up two complimentary angles on vision—the panopticon and the oculus—to illuminate how limitations on what is visible can both impede and catalyze our movement toward alternative political futures. As we descend into Mit Jai Inn’s Underground, we encounter ourselves in the human-scale sculptures imprisoned in fabric chambers. Immersion in physical and metaphorical darkness prompts us to recalibrate our guiding values and forge a new path toward freedom.
Installation Views
