Between 1964 and 1973 the US without notice dropped an estimated 270 million cluster bombs on Laos to cut off supply and tracking lines into Vietnam. Thirty percent of them remain unexploded in the ground, continuing to cause various short and long-term casualties. Laos is historically the most bombed nation per capita. “More bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War than on Germany and Japan combined during World War II,” reported CNN in 2016. 

Pratchaya Phinthong has been working with the villagers of Napia in northeastern Laos, who have been melting the UXOs to create silverware and souvenirs to sell to tourists. Phinthong pays the villagers the production fee he receives from galleries and institutions, producing materials that extend bilateral fields and values. The villagers’ renewal of once a lethal munition, still a threat to many people in Laos, into something functional and tradeable is similar to Phinthong’s artistic gesture of transforming the original context into another.