Don’t miss the Breast Stupas Valentino installation at The Warehouse Hotel, which features the iconic and timeless Valentino Toile Iconographe pattern, on the feminine, convention-defying sculptures by Pinaree Sanpitak, at Singapore Art Week.
The special collaboration by Maison Valentino and renowned Thai sculptress Pinaree Sanpitak, is certainly creative food for thought. A stand-out and must-see at the inaugural edition of ART SG at Singapore Art Week, the mind- and heart-bending pieces, aptly named Breast Stupas Valentino, combine the intense and multi-sensorial forms of Pinaree Sanpitak’s work with Maison Valentino’s enduring and immutable Valentino Toile Iconographe pattern.
Multi-Faceted Approach
While Pinaree Sanpitak gives Breast Stupas Valentino their form, Maison Valentino’s Toile Iconographe pattern completes the arcane creations by lending it a boldness that feels forever new.
Pinaree Sanpitak is one of Asia’s most important contemporary artists. In the 1990s, her ground-breaking exhibition, Breast Works, marked the start of the artist’s reference to an emergent and defining iconography, the female breast, which she became known for.
Her visionary sculptures reveal her exploration of familiar concepts of sources of nourishment: from the fullness of the female breast, to the sepulchral monument, the stupa, found throughout South and Southeast Asia, as well as ritualistic bowls used in daily life.
The bowl – and bowl-like shape of the feminine human breast – is a vessel, a symbol of abundance and life, one that holds water and milk, food, a representation of renewal, birth and new life. In her use of the breast-bowl-bell shapes, Sanpitak also explores the potential of the body, its curves and hollows, and of the overall female experience of mothering and giving life.
The Valentino Toile Iconographe lends yet more layers to the sculptures though: while it celebrates the VLogo, it is also expansive and about something bigger than itself – becoming a symbol of diversity and a multitude of endless possibilities.
As such, Valentino Toile Iconographe and Sanpitak’s Breast Stupas are certainly a harmonious contradiction.
As Pinaree Sanpitak aptly puts it,
It is a celebration of the body as the site of the sacred and the sensual; I see the Valentino Toile Iconographe on the bodies of models and on my own sculptures in a similar view to the Maison’s values of freedom, community, inclusivity…
Art, Eat, Drink
In addition to the brilliant showcase is the aspect of Breast Stupa Cookery Valentino, an ephemeral part of this holistic collaboration. This is an invitation to eat and drink from vessels created by the artist, and savour a menu created in partnership with Chef Joe Napol Jantraget and Chef Saki Hoshino, the husband-and-wife team from the progressive one-Michelin-starred restaurant 80/20 that only uses Thai ingredients. From a feast for the eyes and the soul, here at Breast Stupa Cookery Valentino, the vessels are turned upside down to contain liquid and nourishment, so that the body can also feast and be nurtured and full.
While Breast Stupas Valentino will be on display at the lobby of The Warehouse Hotel till January 25th, Maison Valentino continues, in a concerted and cutting-edge way, its support for culture, supporting the freedom of artistic expression and a commitment towards the future of art and style at a global and local scale.
After the showcase and period of installation, Maison Valentino will donate proceeds from the sale of Breast Stupas Valentino to United Women Singapore, a fund that is dedicated to women’s empowerment and gender equality.
Images courtesy of Valentino, artwork by Curatedition. All rights reserved.
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