Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia
As the Mekong River grows increasingly unstable and depleted, the lives and traditions of communities within its ecosystem have been deeply affected. Through long-term on-site research since 2015, Ruangsak Anuwatmimon, together with the ART WORMs Collective, developed the Mekong Fulcrum Project, reflecting on the river’s rapidly collapsing ecology and cultural memory amid modernization and human intervention. Through collecting soil samples, walking the riverbanks, and engaging with local communities, experts, and activists, Anuwatmimon traces the remnants of a once-abundant river, presenting an installation that contemplates disappearing ways of life, environmental loss, and inherited knowledge shaped by the Mekong across generations.
Presented at Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfu, the project unfolds through spatial and sensory elements that evoke both the physical presence of the river and its gradual transformation. The Mekong Fulcrum: Excavated Gods serves as both an elegy for what is being lost and a call to attend more carefully to the fragile balance between human activity and natural systems.