In Southeast Asia as much as in the American South, the punkah illustrates a spatial adaptation that makes harsh climates more bearable for the colonizer by exploiting the labor of the colonized. In the Antebellum-era dining room, the punkah becomes a spatiotemporal object whose rhythmic movement activates the enclosure of the interior by re-creating an exterior breeze. This movement connects the body of the enslaved to that of his master, whereby the physical exertion of one provides the physical comfort of the other by creating a seemingly effortless breeze. The push and pull of the punkah operator (or punkahwallah) is not just a way to cool the room, it is also a device to control, a display of power whereby the enslaved becomes an object as opulent as the architecture of the plantation and its decor. Such systems of control helped further the expansion of the plantations and their exploitative practices, which set the model for the contemporary agribusiness that has long since altered the world’s social, cultural, and physical landscapes.

In a site-specific investigation at Melrose Plantation in Natchez, Two Breezes removed the punkah from the domestic opulence of the mansion’s dining room, placing it in the grounds of the estate between the main house and the slave quarters, thus activating this well-traveled path with a microclimate of breezes. By inviting museum visitors at Melrose actively “to fan” this space, the punkah became a dislocated object and briefly embodied the experience of the enslaved, shifting the power dynamics of producer and recipient, home and landscape, to create a collision between labor and leisure. This further presents questions of who has access to comfort and refuge from the increasing harshness of our climate—then, as now—and what spatial dynamics collide in the intersection of displays of power, climate, and architecture.