Skowmon Hastanan
b. 1961, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand
Pageant Fever First Class Beauties: Thai Siwalai
Pageant Fever Economy Class Beauties: Thai Borompimarn on Frosted Ice Wild Orchid #622
Pageant Fever (from Les Femmes En route) Economy Class Beauties
Pageant Fever Economy Class Beauties: Thai Borompimarn on Frosted Ice Wild Orchid #622, 2000
Inkjet print and hand painted nail polish enamel, framed in pink, gray, red Thai silk window mat
Courtesy the artist

The Pageant Fever series features repeated images of Asian flight attendants in traditional dress appropriated from Thai postage stamps. Focusing on the global fetishization, commodification, and trafficking of Asian women, Hastanan brings this contemporary condition in relationship to the historical Middle Passage of the African Slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were forcibly transported as cargo to the Americas on brutally squalid and overcrowded large ships between 1600 and 1800s. The sale of enslaved Africans were exchanged for sugar, tobacco, raw materials, and cash crops back to Europe – comprising the trans-Atlantic "Triangle Trade" that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas.