Womanly Abstract is the latest exhibition by prominent female Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak which opened at About Cafe in February this year. For the past ten years Pinaree has been sharpening her female emphasis whilst unovertly and subtly nudging her viewers to reexamine their attitudes and perceptions of gender roles. In her previous 1997 show eggs, breasts, bodies, I, etcetera at Chulalongkorn the simplified, primitive female torsos hinted at the direction she was edging towards. In Womanly Abstract as the title implies, her themes are maintained but their physical manifestations have intentionally become more ambiguous and recondite.

Pinaree's self-exploration into the female consciousness through the corporal metaphor began after her return to Thailand back in 1987. Previously her formative years of formal education were spent studying a year long scholarship at an American high school and later a degree in Fine Art at a university in Japan. This training combined with the experience of living abroad has given Pinaree a broader, less insular perspective that has contributed to the direction of her imagery and media.

About Cafe has been revamped to accommodate Pinaree's show with the cafe being temporarily moved to the roof, making way on the ground floor for the 25 piece composite sculptural installation Womanly Bodies, complemented on the second floor by five large paintings.

Previous symbols of femininity which dominated her oeuvre; breasts, the womb, the female torso, have been further reduced and minimalised to their basic primeval geometric outline. The torso now resembles and is a metaphor of a vessel. The vessel appears hollow and vacuous, once the symbol of fertility and maternity, has this now become an incomplete void ? The "vague" nature of this new work is an element that Pinaree has been seeking to infuse in an attempt to be "less aggressive".

In the paintings, acrylics, pastels and collage are overlaid in predominantly monochrome so that the vessel is stark and hard edged, accentuated with contour lines. The rhythmic sculptures stand two and a half metres tall, their stitched saa fibre material give them a coarse texture, organic distortions in their repetitious stature. On first inspection the work appears to be less sexually charged than before, gone are the direct references to the female as sex object there for the soaking up of man's salivation. Though staring at these fibrous, animate forms, have we in fact been invited to more intimately peruse under the skin, deep inside the female sanctum ?

Viewers certainly won't be able to interpret and absorb Pinaree's new series with the immediacy of the previously more sensuous and revealingly female works, but then this wasn't the desire which drove her to create these still highly personal, almost introspective recent pieces. Although equivocal and partly autobiographical, there are neglected issues contained therein, that society as a whole needs to confront and redress. For men the historical dominance and misuse of power between genders is abhorrent, guilt should seep out at the mere whisper of the term 'sexual equality'. No less potent is the decree for liberalisation that women must impart themselves. However, Pinaree herself is understated and enigmatic when she claims, "I'm not trying to say that women are better than men, or men better than women. I just want to underline the essence and substance of the female being in myself."

Womanly Abstract opened at About Cafe from Feb 13 - Mar 31, 1999