11.23.06 kulturnatib

Artport

Airports are not just gateways to the skies. They are welcome mats where places, countries put, as it were, their best foot forward. And as often, this is not just the technological foot, although certainly it also is since flying is nothing if not technological, but mostly the cultural foot as well.

The newest airport where the art is prominently displayed is the Suvarnabhumi Airport of Bangkok. On approach from Manila, I was impressed by the quarter-onion structure not knowing that this was the new airport I had previously been asked as to whether I was landing on the old or new airport.

Coming from a country where airports are nondescript and remarkable only for the corruption scandals that accompany or even underlie their construction, I am easily impressed. But, not knowing much about this airport, my initial favorable impression was soon to be overtaken. Positively so.

On the corridors from the arrival tube to the immigration control station, I had my initial glimpse of what soon was apparent everywhere in the interior of this airport: Thai art, religious, traditional and more impressively, contemporary.

On the corridors were large scale paintings. In hallways were gigantic statues of Buddhist or Hindu personages and facsimile of temples and royal structures.

Unfortunately, I just barely had time to rush through these works. I had a connecting flight to hurry after. Moreover, I had to see if the cheaper alternatives promised in the internet was available which meant looking for ticketing offices that turned out to be on an upper level about half a kilometer on foot but near the check-in counters which I had to go through.

On the way to the next departure gate were more art, more traditional works this time.

But it was on the return trip where I was most impressed. Our flight's baggage retrieval was assigned to the far most baggage bay. This necessitated traveling through the other bays that were separated by walls on which were large scale murals and, on the wall that separated our bay from the exit ramp, about two dozen contemporary works.

The murals were a hybrid of traditional themes and contemporary techniques using almost entirely the most traditional of colors: gold, in elaborate and giddy detail that I saw earlier in Khmer art and architecture and would see soon thereafter in its Thai counterpart.

Yet, it was the contemporary works that transfixed me. And, shamed me as well. First, in how little I know of the contemporary art and the leading artists of our neighbors and second, in how far behind we are in the appreciation, even access to contemporary art, especially local and then foreign.

Still, it was a good, inspiring experience. It made travel less the necessary chore that it often is. It was a timely reminder that in the rush between here and there can be things that give us pause, affords us reflection and provide us an occasion for respite and rest.

Even then, the day before I was headed to the way to the same airport for the exit flight home, I saw a newspaper headline saying an official committee had determined that this airport was only going to be ready in the next six months.

It was difficult to understand this. Surely it couldn't have been talking about the art inside. As far as I could determine, they were all ready to go, but most importantly, to stay.