Evacuated Crocs, 2011
Thailand’s 2011 floods were discussed through master plans, floodways, and the protection of economic zones—industrial estates and major cities—while communities in flooded areas were left to negotiate survival day by day. Disaster management became a question of which lives and which assets were worth protecting.
As crocodiles reportedly escaped from submerged farms, fear circulated quickly. Yet the owners of these animals were largely absent from public view. For Wantanee, the crocodile does not signify “wild nature,” but the way risk is produced and displaced by systems of ownership and profit.
In Evacuated Crocs, Thai banknotes are folded into origami crocodiles. Currency becomes both subject and material: a critique enacted through the very object that organises value, protection, and abandonment.
