"CONFESSIONS OF AN EVIL ORIENTALIST"

Waswo X. Waswo

I am sitting in Bangkok now, at a small round table. It is the same table at which, just one year ago, I first began to make the list that became The Confessions...a text-based art piece central to the exhibition Confessions of an Evil Orientalist. In that exhibition the list of confessions appeared three times: as a slow-moving video text that was part of the larger installation titled Mantra in a Palki on a Pedestal, as the culmination of a story in a free take-away comic book, and as the main feature in a framed collage titled The Confessions, where the full confessions were typed on antique legal papers and embellished with, among other things, small paintings by R. Vijay. As the three presentations suggest, the confessions can be read in various ways. They can suggest sincere reflections on my part. They can play into a farcical story of misadventure. They can suggest coerced admissions by the cultural police. They can become a poem with many layers.

Unfortunately, much of the printed discourse surrounding the show failed to grasp the fact that these three works, all derived from the same text, actually raise more questions than they answer. The confessions are not just self-critical admissions by me, the artist, (as has been presumed by some in the media). The confessions also beg for self-reflection on the part of the viewer. They beg for reflection in larger cultural contexts. Displaying The Confessions with hanging copper "Oriental" magnifying glasses caused viewers to pick up the lens and transform themselves into the examiners. A mirror in another small installation (hidden in a corner) made them look at themselves.