Michael Shaowanasai, (born in 1964 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), is a Thai-American artist and actor who lives in Bangkok. His practice is multidisciplinary and includes performance art, photography, video, film and installations. He first graduated from School of Law at Chulalongkorn University in 1985, and later earned a bachelor's of fine arts degree at San Francisco Art Institute in 1994 and a master's of fine arts from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. He is a founding member of Project 304, a prominent Bangkok and Chiangmai-based contemporary art group, whose members include Apichatpong Weeraseethakul, Kamol Phaosavasdi and Gridithiya Gaweewong. His works have been exhibited widely and internationally and he has also represented Thailand at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2009.Shaowanasai also gained fame as an actor, especially as “Iron Pussy” where he plays a transvestite Thai secret agent who is also a gay male 7-Eleven store clerk. The 2003 Thai musical-action-comedy film “The Adventure of Iron Pussy”, written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Michael Shaowanasai, is an homage and parody of the 1970s Thai action films, musicals and melodramas. The film has achieved cult status, having been shown at the 2000 Mardi Gras in Sydney, the 2003 Tokyo International Film Festival, the 54th Berlin Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Melbourne International Film Festival, amongst others.Exotic 101 is a satirical instructional tape critiquing the sexual objectification of Thai men ( esp. gay male sex workers and the sex industry in Thailand). The video teaches you how to perform as a Thai (or Asian) pole dancer with a half-naked male figure in the video demonstrating moves appropriate for pole dancing and with the artist at the side providing instructions and a running commentary . The viewer is encouraged to dance on a fabricated A-Go-Go pole platform provided next to the video and adopt the same postures, in a move to explicitly self-exoticise. Exotic 101 was originally created for the exhibition "Welcome to My Land...Come and Taste the Paradise" at project 304 in Bangkok, 1997. The audience was invited onto a tiny stage equipped with a stainless steel pole, headphones, and a TV monitor which faced only the viewer on stage. Following the instructions given through the video soundtrack heard on the headphones, the viewer plays the parts of "the performer" while fellow viewers off-stage play the part of audience. After the tape is finished, the table will turn to the next viewer. According to the artist, this work requires the participants to take part and experience the process of viewing (voyeurism) and to be viewed, or at least to learn about the art of being "exotic”. The work is also about the fascination of the "exotic ideal" of the East from the point of view of the West. The artist guarantees that if you follow the directions correctly, you will achieve the “exotic” in just 7 mins.
