Kai Altmann (aka Hitashya) is a globally nomadic artist who makes work in conceptually soft-branded “teams” or series which she treats as palettes, identities and states of mind.
These teams include many kinds of materials, language and conceptual craft, which she binds together through performance, image-making, music, text, installations, social feeds and video. With a background in music and film as well as art and many different alternative communities, she embodies an interdisciplinary practice which champions social, media-based, and experiential forms of art as much as physical exhibitions.
As a traveling creative, she also accepts commissions in cities around the world, and tries to reflect “glocal” (a hybrid of global and local) production availability with each project.
The identity she’ll work on here in Bangkok is Soft Mobility, for which she’ll be sourcing materials from art stores, street markets, Alibaba and local fabricators alike, combining it all with handmade or hand altered elements, as well as involving her self and her social network from around the world.
She’ll also be working on her musical project, Hitashya, and shooting/writing for her editorial project, XLE.LIFE.
She is here thanks to funding from the Asian Cultural Council in New York.
Period: 20 AUG – 18 NOV 2019
“Soft Mobility”
Kai Altmann
Kai Altmann presents one of her identities, Soft Mobility, as a display of objects, images and performance.
Kai has been an invited resident here at Tentacles via the Asian Cultural Council (NYC) for two months developing the materials for this presentation, which is part of her ongoing work, Soft Mobility, 2014-Present.
Soft Mobility was originally commissioned by the New Museum in New York for its First Look series in 2014, and has been presented as a solo show at Forde in Geneva in 2018. It was also commissioned for an editorial in Art Papers by 032C Editor and Curator Victoria Camblin. Beyond this it lives online as a regularly updated series of content, including a performance that has been documented via photos around the world.
Other well-known works and identities by Kai include Xomia, Flexia, Smart Mobility, XLTE, TTOA, Vital Signs and Hitashya, Kai’s musical project which will release an EP and music videos in 2020.
As a globally touring audiovisual artist, she considers her current base city to be Mumbai and is eagerly exploring South Asia.
Since 2015 she has traveled further and further beyond the West for shows, residencies, shoots and lectures, but this is her first time to be in Bangkok for an extended period. Much of her work has been post-western or global in nature, aimed at reaching and defining new hybridized territories of thought, language and aesthetics. This current phase of her career aims to make the abstractions of the world image system more known geographies. She is also aiming to merge her film, music and art practices into a holistic future.
Kai’s work and thoughts have been featured by The New Museum, Serpentine Gallery, Dazed Magazine, The Goethe Institute, The Hirshhorn Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art London, The Fader, Art News, The New School and many more.
