Monte Vista Projects will be screening Nuttaphol Ma’s film A Grain of Rice Under A Microscope.
The screening will be on Jan 10 and 11 from 12 – 5 p.m.
A Grain of Rice Under A Microscope. was inspired from an event that took place at a retail day job on a busy autumn Sunday in 2010. Nuttaphol’s co-worker approached him looking deeply distraught. She saw our managers watching their activities on the office's computer monitor. The artist woke up the following day feeling like a grain of rice under a microscope. In 2013, the artist set out to retrace his experience of that busy autumn Sunday. He performed an act of sitting and surveying in and around the premise of McDonald's to mirror the 8 hour shift of the workers behind the counter. Two rolls of B/W super 8 film were deconstructed to shoot one frame for every four seconds in order to captured my 8 hour sitting where I recorded unfolding events and conversations that occurred between management, myself, and two police officers. The film is a poetic experience that slips between work and memory, protest and meditation, surveillance and watcher.
Nuttaphol Ma’s multidisciplinary works align his dreams, consciousness and memories to compose stories about the dreams of leaving and dreams of roots, the longing and not BE longing. Ma connects the seemingly disconnected patterns and sequences of unfolding moments from the everyday to re-tell empowering stories of belonging and not longing, about flowers blossoming from solitude. Ma currently runs a nomadic self-imposed sweatshop entitled The China Outpost that migrates throughout Los Angeles. Ma has participated in numerous exhibition spaces throughout Los Angeles including: 18th Street Art Center, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pitzer College Lenzner Gallery, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall, The Fellows of Contemporary Art, Angels Gate Cultural Center and Freewaves. Through the generous support of the Los Angeles art community, Ma is a recipient of the following fellowships and artist’s residencies: Armory Center for the Arts Teaching Artist Fellowship, California Community Foundation Fellowship, The Feitelson Arts Fellowship, Pitzer College Emerging Artist Fellow, 18th Street Art Center Artist Fellow, The Mountain School of Art Residency, the Richter Watson Fellowship Fund and the Walker / Parker Memorial Fellowship.