“In Thai we don’t have a beautiful word for sex. So I’ll draw it.” This is the explanation written by Praew Perry for the erotic drawings she posts on Instagram, as @nowordforthis, for almost 60,000 fans.
Aticha Lik agrees with her, her own erotic drawings — which appear on the Instagram account @strangeromance — feature dark themes and humor, and when captioned, English words since the right vocabulary for sensual sex does not exist in the Thai language.
“The words in Thai are scientific or prude, meant for writing or formal settings. Or they are shaming words,” explained Praew.
The women co-headline the art show Secrets, which opens tomorrow night with a party at a new gallery space inside Silom’s Whiteline called Scene Gallery. We had a chance to talk to them ahead of their debut IRL exhibition.
Though they didn’t know each other before joining forces for the show, their work has much in common. Focusing on black and white line drawings (though Aticha is showing paintings as well), they both feature themes like masturbation, sex toys, and coupling. They both also hope to make conversation about sex more mainstream with their work, and remove the taboo from it while also furthering ideas of body and sex positivity.
Praew’s work is a bit more accessible, inviting the viewer to investigate the topic through fine line drawings of traditionally attractive bodies — even when they are bound in Japanese kinbaku, engaged in foot play, or wearing a tail.
Aticha’s work is darker, commenting as much on the difficult nature of relationships as sex. There are, at times, floppy breasts, glasses, and natural pubic hair. There are references to relationships with sex dolls, messy anal relations, and real dating woes. One piece is captioned: “I miss him terribly and he’s probably scratching his balls not having a clue.”
Aticha does not consider sex that personal of a subject — which may be why she’s so comfortable drawing it. She explains: “I like talking about sex with my friends, I always have. I don’t know why people aren’t comfortable with it.”
On the same subject, Praew said, “Sex is very common but very personal. All of my work is inspired by my personal life and I hope it has a personal feeling for people that look at it.”
And Praew’s sometimes coy, sometimes daring work does resonate with online viewers. When asked how she grew such a large fan base when she’s never shown her work live, she called it organic growth. “People visit my page and tag their friends, tag their lovers, and then they follow.”
Aticha’s work is more editorial in style, calling to mind comics from The New Yorker, at times, in look and humor — but with much more nudity. In her panels, there are giant dicks — women sleeping on them, cuddling them, watering a garden of them, even riding in mushroom-tipped airplanes.
When questioned about the meaning of them, she said, “It’s phallic art, so I try to always include a dick. But the dick you see isn’t gross, it’s cute, something you can appreciate.”
When I considered the role of the dicks in her work before meeting her, I was not sure if she was implying that her female characters were comforted by them, chasing them, motivated by them, or haunted by them.
But sometimes a dick is just a dick. “Why did I make a dick airplane?” Aticha repeated my question with a furrowed brow. “Because an airplane looks like a dick! Don’t you think so?”
Aticha went on to explain that, when she made that particular piece, she had recently learned about the concept of BDE (Big Dick Energy, a concept she introduced this writer to) so she branded the dick airplane in the drawing BDE Air. Cute.
Secrets is curated by Bangkok-based Swedish-Finnish photographer Kimmo Kauko, who also dabbles in erotic themes in his own work and once sent Coconuts nudes.
He said that he conceived the show because he wanted to show sex from a Thai female perspective. He’s also fascinated with art on Instagram and its accessibility, so he wanted to see how it would translate into a traditional exhibition.
FIND IT:
Secrets
Scene Gallery
Silom Soi 8 (Inside Whiteline, 2nd floor)
Opening party, tomorrow 6-11pm
BTS Sala Daeng
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