Surasi Kusolwong (Thai, b. 1965) makes installations and performances that reference consumer society and the economy. Through his participatory and interactive works the Bangkok-based artist encourages social interaction over economic exchange. His large-scale installation Golden Ghost (The Future Belongs To Ghosts) (2011), which was first presented in the Creative Time exhibition Living as Form, invites visitors to enter into the vast field of industrial thread waste to search for gold necklaces hidden in the piles of cotton. Visitors who are fortunate enough to find a necklace are welcome to keep it. The work suggests a sense of play in which visitors can climb the mounds of thread waste, comb through the material and explore. While the literal treasure hunt in a field of excess serves as a metaphor for consumption at the global and individual level, it also inverts standard systems of exchange—the expensive gold necklaces are not sold nor bartered, but generously given away.
Surasi Kusolwong is organized by Christopher Y. Lew, Assistant Curator of MoMA PS1.
