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Art Exhibition : Nang Kwak: Equal Opportunity By Sakarin Krue-on and Michael Shaowanasai (Invited Artist) .............................. Equal opportunity is like a tiny speck in the distant horizon. It lures in the idealistic, only for them to find an advertising campaign that has embedded that hope and desire for equal opportunity within them, the spark that creates capitalism. Convincement creates belief and blindness in the search for this opportunity, and in turn creates necessity, and has now become a powerful and important tool in the empire of capitalism. It is a system that has the power to effect the trends of moralism little by little until dependency steps in. Feeling sympathy for those with less opportunity and knowing when enough is enough has become nonsense. Our present society is one that feeds us with aspiring and ambitious dreams, in effect changing our culture and way of life. We are led to believe in the system of capitalism, to believe that money and materialism are the main pillars of enhancing life and giving everyone an equal chance to be a millionaire. Moderation is out of the question, everything is about price, with the material dictating the personal power of an individual. The differences between the various explanations for equal opportunity, including the dictionary meaning, is a siren warning about the existence of the dream and the reality in society. Electronic media, the moving image, sound and text, and the form it takes, creates a tension in the mind of the viewer. This is visually obvious by looking at the Nang Kwak, who is played by Michael Shaowanasai, a mixed media and time-based artist who also creates work that is against perfection and conventional beauty, as a way to emphasize thoughts on this advertising. The Nang Kwak symbol once symbolised prosperity but it can now be associated with the state of current society, with its false hopes and greed that have become a gigantic altar of faith, leading to a society that moves towards finding more opportunity than is necessary. This is the step towards the new age of looking to make money without working. Clever people are taught to take advantage of those less intelligent so that the rich steal from the poor. Those in power abuse their power to make material gain for themselves. How will society turn out when intelligence, richness and power are united? Perhaps holding morals, being able to give and respect others is something we should encourage, rather than creating equal opportunity which is merely an ideal that cannot happen. Sakarin Krue-On