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Published on February 21, 2008

Angelina Jolie adopts kids from forlorn countries, and Madonna and Ewan McGregor too. If that's a bandwagon you'd like to ride, there are lots of mournful little orphans waiting for you at Bangkok's 100 Tonson Gallery.

In Belgian artist Peggy Wauters' "Myths and Monstrosities" exhibition, continuing until April 20, huddled on the gallery floor is an array of dolls - formerly a rabbit, a bear, a monkey, Mickey Mouse - but any appeal they may have once had is gone.

The cute, fuzzy bodies remain, but their ceramic "human" heads are grotesque, with bloodshot eyes, broken teeth and cracked lips. Some of the little gargoyles are crippled.

"It's a critique on the Belgian mentality," Wauters says, though she could be talking about most Western countries.

"In Europe, when people want to adopt a child, it takes a long time because of the paperwork. I know of one person who wanted to adopt, but because of all the complicated red tape she finally gave up."

Celebrities might be able to cut corners with developing countries, but for most people adoption is a matter of undergoing months of personal scrutiny and many more months of waiting for approval.

Wauters' point is to remind us that children often wait too long to be adopted, and "some never are". Her orphans have not endured the wait well.

The 40-year-old artist admits that growing up in Aalst, a town famous for its carnival, skewed her worldview. Along with the garish characters it attracted there were elaborate period costumes, and in her drawings these adorn old women with sagging breasts and pancake makeup.

"I refer sometimes to plastic surgery and how ludicrous body modifications can be," she says.

"In my sculptures and drawings I alter human bodies by, for example, adding bunny ears or removing legs. This is just as possible with clay and pencil as it is with surgery!

"My sculptures may seem extreme, but I'm concerned with showing the correspondence with, for example, breast-enlargement surgery. To me, king-size breast are just as strange as they are comical."

Elsewhere in the show, Wauters rewrites her favourite children's tales, "Alice in Wonderland" and "Little Red Riding Hood". In her interpretations there is nothing cheerful, only the "realistic and gruesome". Red Riding Hood snarls viciously at a meek-looking wolf.

Her sculpted human figures are wrinkled and paunchy with pointed demons' ears.

People tend to turn away from imperfections, Wauters says, because society insists that everything should be perfect. "This pressure is sometimes so strong it becomes ridiculous."

A cute infant happily naps in a drawing entitled "The Security" - holding a pistol.

Her disdain for urban living is clear in a series of two- and three-dimensional works in which people are boxed up in cubes, their limbs held by wires. In one, a ceramic nude is blindfolded and suspended in mid-air, mouth agape in a silent scream.

"Living in flats in any big city, people don't know who their neighbours are," Wauters laments. "They're always stuck in their own rooms and don't see what's happening next door."

The exhibition marks Wauters' Asian debut. She searched the Web for galleries and found the Tonson at the top of one list.

"When I read about its concept I saw the similarity between this space and my work. At the time I didn't even know where it was!

"I'd been working on the orphans and cube series, and this gallery is in a cube shape, and part of the sales proceeds support orphanages. It's quite a coincidence!"

The gallery is at 100 Soi Tonson off Ploenchit Road and open Thursday to Sunday from 11 to 7. Call (02) 684 1527 or visit 100TonsonGallery.com.

Khetsirin Pholdhampalit

The Nation