[[ir]reversible]] (2025)

Sea turtles return to the very shores where they were born, guided by a bodily instinct that remembers their place of origin. In this cyclical gesture of homecoming and death, Saroot Supasuthivech situates a meditation on ritual, memory, and migration. His encounter in 2024 with a dead turtle on the coast of Gapado, Jeju Island, became the starting point for a series of reflections about how beings find their way back—and how such acts of return might form part of a ritual of remembrance. For the Biennale, this journey unfolds in[[ir]reversible]] , an installation bringing together video, light, smoke, and carved wood sculpture. In Phuket, Supasuthivech explores the theme of return through the overlapping rhythms of festivals, music, and the sea. The work brings into dialogue three narrative strands, each revealing how cultural practices and natural instincts carry the weight of memory across time and space.

The first begins with the Chinese diasporic community in Phuket, notably the Vegetarian Festivals. Once vital acts of negotiation and remembrance, these rituals have gradually been absorbed into tourism, losing their original force. Sacred palanquins that once carried deities now sit idle in storage, gathering dust as silent anchors of history. The second strand revisits “Home Sweet Home”, a song once used to teach Chinese. Having in the past evoked nostalgia for distant homelands, the lyrics today survive only in textbooks, with voices fading from collective memory.The third depicts a turtle dissection filmed at the Phuket Marine Biological Center. Exposing the organs within, the sequence traces a reverse rhythm, from the inner body back to the oceanic world to which it belongs.

Taken together, these elements stage a work of mourning and re-circulation. Rather than restoring a lost origin,[[ir]reversible]] reverses the current allowing symbols, memories, and rituals to move again. Just like the turtle carrying its dwelling on its back, the work reimagines journeys of displacement and return as rituals of continual transformation—where death and rebirth are inseparably entwined.

Written by Eugene Hannah Park

Screen 4k digital video and audio 5.1 channels and Moving PAR light, smoke machine and carved wood

Dimensions variable
Video Duration : 40:00 min

Commissioned by Thailand Biennale, Phuket