12 Camels, vol.2 at kalm village

“Sometimes it is more fortunate, when you don’t get what you wish for”

This was a text that accompanied camel number 10 assembled by o-d-a, one of Thailand’s leading design studios. This short but sharp statement sliced through the heart of the original intention of the exhibition, first for the Bangkok edition and still true for the second time, as the Chiangmai edition welcomes camels 13-24.

Where is the boundary of “What we wish for”? The answer may well be the boundary of our imagination, the line that marked the known from the unknown. A place unreachable by thoughts and speculations as its incomprehensibility has its foundation in the void of experience. Often times designers are in a fortunate situation where one has a luxury of choice. Meaning the ability to select, combine and render combination of materials to produced the desired outcomes. There is a consensus sense of beauty or the lack of, when certain materials come together. All of which operates in the domain of knowledge.

But this is true only in usual circumstances. The 12 Camels situation created a condition where the liberty of choice is removed. The real luxury is luck and the only perk is that there are 12 teams going through their own different versions of unknown together. But the unknown had led the teams to places never before conceived, pushed them to make unimaginable objects, and the result is beyond their expectations. Maybe this is the real fortune. 

A chair can be seen merely as a supporting structure that releases its user from the burden of standing up if one considered it only as furniture. But a chair seen or perceived as a medium can be a tool for metaphor.

The arrival of Bangkok’s 12 camels in Chiang Mai together with an invitation for local artisans, designer and makers to produce 12 more camels from the same concept lie something to be said. There is a parallel between constructing a stool out of elements that were inconceivable in combination and bringing together a group of people who were otherwise strangers. The differences in the qualities of materials are very much alike when we consider the pool of backgrounds from a group of people. The diversity in age, the up-bringing, status, class, pre-conceptions etc. But to successfully construct a stool, it requires all different entities of materials to cooperate. For each piece has to do its part in upholding a structure, for the very least that stool has an ability to hold its own weight. Possibly with 24 Camels, the same could be said about a group of people from all walks of life constructing a structure of friendship.   

Date: 7 May - 11 June 2022

Location: Kalm Village, (14 Phra Pok Klao Rd Soi 4, Tambon Phra Sing, Mueang Chiang Mai District, Chiang Mai 50200)

Exhibiting artists: Achariya Rojanapirom & Ratthee Phaisanchotsiri, Bora Hong, Ease Studio, Meanwhile Woodwork, Nakornsang Studio, Nanu Youttananukorn, o-d-a, Phisanu Numsiriyothin, Rudee Tancharoen, Shed Studio, Sher Maker, Torlarp Larpjaroensook, Bangkok Tokyo Architecture, Boon, Boon’s Hobby, If I were a Carpenter, InClay Studio, Jai Baan Studio, Melt District, Moonler, Rakker & Udit, Robert Sukrachand, Studio Mueja, Tua Pen Not.

All photos by Pichan Sujaritsatit