Description
On the international artistic scene since the early 1990s, Navin Rawanchaikul is one of the major Asian contemporary artists. Born in Thailand but of Indian origin, the artist developed a community-based practice that is capable of grasping the tension between the individual and society in a constantly changing world . Drawing from autobiographical elements, he deals with the question of evolution and cultural identity in terms of migratory flows. By embracing a Pop aesthetic, which allows him create a conversation between consumer goods and traditional art history, locality and globality, he experiments with the ready-made, the iconography of large-scale Indian movie posters, the comic strip, the video, and performative actions. Ciao Roma, the simple and cordial greeting that accompanies typical postcards sent by tourists, is the title of the work commissioned by MAXXI for the exhibition The Street. Where the World Is Made (2018-2019). The large canvas, which is part of a corpus of works that the artist describes as “portraits of the community,” is the result of his trip, in the fall of 2018, to Rome, Cassino, and the Pontine Marshes. It testifies to his encounters with the Southern Asian communities (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan) that migrated to Italy starting from the 1990s.