Thailand is a country that is not only rich in resources and nature, but also in stories. And there is a relationship between them, says Hadrien Gérenton in his plan to investigate this further during an artist-in-residency in 2022. He focuses on Thailand's coastal waters, offshore areas and inland areas where oil and gas are extracted. “I find this region particularly interesting because of the different aspects of its recent and ancient history, its cultural diversity and the myths and legends associated with its geographical identity.” It is a tropical area with a lot of history but also rapid technological developments. Power stations and industries covering millions of hectares will be built in the forests. It affects nature and affects the human population in a country that is already complex: since the close Vietnam War, Thailand has long been seen as an exotic paradise because of a Western tourist desire. Gérenton wants to explore from an artistic point of view how such opposing forces co-operate and influence demography, fauna and socio-ecological issues in a complex sociological area.

Gérenton studied in Paris and Montpellier, came to Rotterdam after a two-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam to deepen his research practice. He was awarded several stipends and exhibited in France and the US. He makes sculptures to tell stories in interaction with the viewer. With humor he reproduces everyday objects such as a pickle made of resin, life-size agave cacti, leashed plastic lizards in the walking forest near the Lustwarande in Tilburg. They arise from observing the everyday, as he also wants to document, sketch, record, photograph during this journey as a diary form in order to stay close to the direct experience of the unknown. The R&D committee called his aesthetics stimulating and expected from this proposal beautiful new images and a good impulse for his practice.

The trajectory originated from the invitation for an exhibition in the Thai region and will cover the first half of 2022, with a research trip through the country and along the oil extraction areas. He documents this with notes, drawings, sketches, sound recordings and photography in a diary-like manner, which he shows on a website, for which he stays in contact with the Thai population. As step two, he continues his research in Rotterdam on the oil industry in the port, in order to make new work from it, in a spectrum that fluctuates between environmental awareness and technology on the one hand and an aesthetic approach on the other.