Private Project

Wuthichai (Exit Interview)

In the two-channel video installation Wuthichai (Exit Interview) (2021), Sunny Leerasanthanah holds imagined conversations with her deceased father, Wuthichai, by hiring actors to play his role. Video screens display the conversations between Sunny and the strangers who had responded to Sunny's open call for actors on online Thai immigrant community forums. In five different performances, Sunny reads a script of questions she always wanted to ask her father, who lived in Bangkok, Thailand, his whole life while she moved abroad: "Are you disappointed that I live far away?" "Are you afraid of expressing your feelings?" In return, each actor improvises candid answers to these questions—as a father would to his child—some even using props of objects that belonged to Wuthichai. The videos are accompanied by an installation of Wuthichai's habitually-used objects. The project meditates on the ability for stangers to connect and care without really knowing who they are speaking to; a cathartic exercise in empathy that felt resonant amid the Covid pandemic.

  • Sunny Leerasanthanah
    Director
  • Sunny Leerasanthanah
    Writer
  • Sunny Leerasanthanah
    Producer
  • Phupiriya Chakkaphark
    Key Cast
    "Wuthichai"
  • Spike Fazzalari
    Key Cast
    "Wuthichai"
  • Pakapong Phiewkham
    Key Cast
    "Wuthichai"
  • Sorawat Ruangamporn
    Key Cast
    "Wuthichai"
  • Watson Sriboonwong
    Key Cast
    "Wuthichai"
  • Sorn Bunnag
    Camera Operator
  • Sorn Bunnag
    Assisting Script Editor
  • Dan Fethke
    Sound Mixer
  • Dan Fethke
    Lighting
  • Sunny Leerasanthanah
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Other
  • Runtime:
    48 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 22, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    4,900 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    Thai
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • New York City
    United States
    May 25, 2021
    SculptureCenter 2021 In Practice Exhibition
    Award: Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant 2021
Director Biography - Sunny Leerasanthanah

Sunny Leerasanthanah (she/her, they/them) was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, and currently lives and works in New York City. Her visual art practice spans video, multimedia installation, photography, book arts, and performance, ruminating on storytelling, family, identity, placemaking, superstition, and memory. In 2023, she will have her first institutional solo exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, sharing a new video installation about the control of foreign bodies and species.

Sunny is most recently a recipient of the 2023 Center for Book Arts' Book Artist-in-Residence. As part of her residency, she will be developing the project Offerings, using Qing Ming joss paper to discuss family rituals and gifts for the dead. In 2022, she was a recipient of the LGBTQ+ Fire Island Artist Residency. In 2021, she created and exhibited the video installation, Wuthichai (Exit Interview), in SculptureCenter’s In Practice show, You may go, but this will bring you back (2021). The project was awarded the Queens Council on the Arts 2021 New Work Grant. In other recent work, she had 40+ photographic portraits of American artists and curators published in the book We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World by Jasmin Hernandez (2021). In 2020, she self-published a book that debuted at Bangkok Art Book Fair titled Mom’s Magnets (2020).

Sunny received a Master of Arts in arts administration from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film and photography from Ithaca College.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

At the suggestion of fortune tellers, my parents were determined for my brother and I to find a better life abroad far away from home in Thailand. As an immigrant living and working in America today, I ruminate on this path that I have taken. Wuthichai (Exit Interview) centers my estranged relationship with my father who passed away in 2020 in Bangkok. The project attempts to conjure my father through the words and actions of others. The work was an exercise of empathy, in which I could express my thoughts and feelings to a complete stranger, and study how they would empathize with the death of someone they don't know by being that person. I believe this exercise speaks to the current global climate; how people can collectively grieve over loss amid a pandemic. The exercise is not about attempting a realistic portrayal of my father or our relationship, but rather about forming a brief and honest emotional connection with a complete stranger. I shared an open call searching for Thai-speaking people who, like me, live in New York City. The performers in the work ended up being five non-professional actors ranging from age 40 to 60. Despite the transactional nature of the casting—paying the actors to perform—many elicited candid and emotional responses. Some explained to me after their performance that they too, were separated from family. What surfaced from this experience was that I was not only sharing my own story, but the stories of others through these fictionalized conversations. Specifically stories of Thai immigrants who have also been distanced from home and family. Additionally, by sharing the objects that my father owned within the installation, his absence creates an overwhelming presence in itself, leaving clues as to who this person was.