Jim Thompson Farm Festival 2024 “Isan Calling”

The Isan region accounts for one third of the total land mass of Thailand. Its geographical characteristics are distinctive from the rest of the country; comprising the Mekong River in the East and several mountain ranges bordering the Central region in the West and Cambodia in the South. Thailand as a country is home for over 4,000 species of rice and more than half of those varieties are grown exclusively in Isan. Several important rivers, originating in the high mountains, together with the Mekong River and its tributaries feed into the agricultural bounty of the Isan plateau.

“Golden Land” is a project by Kelsey Merreck Wagner in collaboration with Warin Lab Contemporary. It celebrates “rice” as a gift from the land and rivers through an installation of weaved tapestries. Primarily using scrap materials from Jim Thompson’s fabric production as well as discarded consumer throw-aways, the large scaled weavings provide immersive experience to the visitors. Upon entering the space, the visitors encounter 2 hanging weavings; one represents river with its blue hue, the other represents rice, land and mountains with its shades of white, green, and brown. Visually the artwork honors land and rivers as the source of sustenance and economic value. Paradoxically, the weaved materials evidently manifest the glaring truth that plastic pollution has become ubiquitous in natural and built-up environments resulting from human’s mismanagement and negligence.

At Jim Thompson Farm Festival, visitors are invited to join a collaborative weaving project using thrown-away plastics as well as left over materials from Jim Thompson’s fabric production.