Sunny Leerasanthanah: Contain Yourself

In conjunction with their solo exhibition, “This is as far as I can take you,” Smack Mellon presents a performance-driven presentation by the artist, Sunny Leerasanthanah. As a performance, “Contain Yourself” narrates the process of creating a live and living archive while interweaving stories linked to the themes and contents of the exhibition. Using storytelling, projected images, time, text, and documentation, Sunny meanders through topics including accidental archiving, amateur camcording, fixations on ghosts, and how to convince the US Citizenship and Immigration Services of an urgent event.

About the exhibition: “This is as far as I can take you” is a multi-channel video installation that combines footage taken by the artist during trips to Thailand between 2020 and 2023 alongside home video footage captured by their late father between 1991 and 1998. This exhibition continues Leerasanthanah’s search to embody and translate absence, following their 2021 project “Wuthichai (Exit Interview)”, which featured speculative conversations with their recently deceased father staged for video by Thai actors, as well as an archive of personal effects. “This is as far as I can take you” conveys the experience of separation and loss through intimate video and textual documentation.

Sunny Leerasanthanah (b. Bangkok, Thailand) is a multidisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Sunny observes and documents impressions and boundaries of place, time, loss, identification, and belonging. They have worked across film, video installation, photography, books, archives, roleplay, prompts, and conversation. They are a recipient of the Artists Alliance Inc. LES Studio Program (2024), Center for Book Arts Residency (2023), Image Text Workshop Residency (2023), Fire Island Artist Residency (2022), Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant (2021), Rehearsal Residency (2018), and Ithaca College’s James B. Pendleton Grant (2015). They have exhibited at John Michael Kohler Arts Center (WI), SculptureCenter (NY), Lubov (Projects) (NY), and Local Project Art Space (NY), amongst other spaces. Their book Mom’s Magnets (2020) is in the collection of Asia Art Archive in America (NY) and Fathom Library (RI).