Uncanny Drought: On Apichaya Wanthiang’s Evil Spirits Only Travel in Straight Lines

Abstract

Apichaya Wanthiang’s art installation Evil Spirits Only Travel in Straight Lines (2018) recreated a drought in Thailand by filling the gallery space in Oslo with soothing heat emanating from huge, dry, dirt sculptures. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to both touch and sit down on the dried clay sculptures. They were bone dry and felt warm on the skin. The recreated environmental event was contrasted with the freezing Oslo winter outside the gallery space, but the inside and the outside of the gallery were also connected through a synchronisation of the dim light in the exhibition space and the ongoing dusk outside—opening up for the sensorial aspect of climatic change. By describing a subjective experience of Wanthiang’s environmental event, this chapter shows how an uncanny drought in an exhibition space can activate a mode of habituation when faced with the overwhelming consequences of the age of humans.