Death is inevitable, which is why you should not be afraid of it. It’s a natural part of all life. This is the lesson that Pavisa Meersrenon has embraced and hopes to share with her viewers in her most recent solo show at Melbourne’s SOL Gallery, which tackles the subject head-on. It’s a joyful collection of work that takes a light-hearted approach to heavy subject matter, dealing with personal loss and expressing it through joy and pleasure—things we should focus on while we’re still here and alive. Skeletons masquerade through wildlife and starry skies, riding mythical creatures and joined by feline friends. They’re covered in Chinese porcelain designs and inhabit landscapes full of floral patterns. It’s got a comic edge but is flush with traditional inspirations and the wisdom of religious texts.
Meersrenon’s work is the result of deep loss. During COVID she lost an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin. A couple of years before that, her father and brother also passed. And a few months ago she also lost the cat she’d had for 16 years. In the face of so much tragedy, she had to find meaning within it. “The people important to me are all passing away, which made me realize the importance of life. I read a lot of philosophy books about death. I’m not scared of dying anymore,” she explains. “It’s simple. Buddhism says people are born and die all the time, it’s just natural. So why be scared of it.” If you’re too afraid to die, you’ll lash out and do bad things like kill others or act greedily just to stem the tide of the inevitable, she argues.
In one painting, Meersrenon depicts a scene from Noah’s ark, drawing attention to how people murdered each other as well as killing plants and animals in a doomed attempt to escape the floods, even though they still would have died at some point even if they were successful. “So why do all that?” she asks. Although she’s not religious, she’s keenly interested in the lessons she can learn from different religions. “They all kind of have the same moral, to be a better person.” In another painting, she flies on the back of a chimeric creature with the skeleton of her best friend, who is still alive in real life. It’s based on a conversation they had where she asked her friend what she’d do after she dies, and she said she’d travel. “I was like, ‘Girl, why not do that now??'” Her paintings also frequently feature the kittens she recently got who run around her studio while she paints.
The skeletons are a direct comment on the fleeting nature of life, but they also represent humans stripped of gender, nationality, and race. Meersrenon finds comfort in this idea, pointing to the discrimination she’s faced while traveling and how people make jokes about sex tourism and party life when they learn she’s from Bangkok. “If we meet outside the gallery space or I don’t tell them I’m an artist, they always make a joke,” she complains. “But when they find out I’m an artist, they change the topic and talk about how they went to the temple and it’s so beautiful here.” She further comments on this in her artwork with the creature she rides with her friend, which is a dragon common in Chinese folklore but features the head of an elephant. “Since I’m Thai-Chinese, I kind of play with that, like which one am I really?”
Meersrenon infuses her work with all these traditional inspirations, but sometimes viewers don’t pick up on them. At her first solo show here in Bangkok a farang couple were discussing one of her paintings while she listened in discreetly. They debated where she must be from, going back and forth between Japanese and Mexican, which she found entertaining. As a result, she made one painting where the skeleton wears a hat resembling a sombrero to play with viewers’ perceptions. “I don’t want people to be sad,” she says of the intentional comedic element across most of the show. “We have to live happily.”
This is Meersrenon’s third solo show in two years, something she says was challenging. Next year, she plans to take a break from the gallery world and focus more on design work and collaborations with others: “I want to take the time to figure out what to do next, to make sure I’m doing my best work and not rushing myself just to make sales. I don’t paint because I want to make money, I do it to express myself. If you only want money, please don’t do art.”
