I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) opens at Bangkok CityCity Gallery on 26th April. The ambitious project is a series of twenty-four videos, each one a montage of excerpts sourced from Chulayarnnon’s personal archive (including newly digitised material from VHS and MiniDV tapes) and reappropriated footage from the Thai Film Archive.

An extended trailer for the project, released on the Vimeo website last week, includes photographs from a meeting between Chulayarnnon and the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, which banned his short film Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง) from the Thailand Biennale in 2018, with captions describing the OCAC’s criticisms of the film. (Chulayarnnon discussed Birth of Golden Snail, and his other work, in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

Also, news footage of student protests from 2020 is intercut with shots of the authoritarian leader from Planetarium, Chulayarnnon’s segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand. A superimposed snail slithers across the screen, its trail of slime echoing the water cannon used by riot police in Siam Square. Another snail has a broken shell, perhaps symbolising the wounded protesters.

The exhibition runs until 21st June. On the first day, the gallery will be open for twenty-four hours, and will show all twenty-four videos as a durational installation. Chulayarnnon’s previous exhibition at Bangkok CityCity, Give Us a Little More Time (ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน), took place in 2020.

Spray Nation: 1980s NYC Graffiti Photographs

Martha Cooper collaborated with fellow photographer Henry Chalfant on Subway Art, a record of New York subway graffiti that became known as the graffiti bible. Almost forty years later, in 2022, a more substantial selection of Cooper’s photography was published in Spray Nation: 1980s NYC Graffiti Photographs. The book also includes essays on Cooper’s seminal influence on graffiti history, describing her as “the grand dame of street art photography”.

The very first book on street art was The Faith Of Graffiti, from 1974. Chalfant co-wrote Spraycan Art with James Prigoff. Trespass covers the history of graffiti. There are also two books on the Bangkok graffiti scene: Bangkok Street Art and Bangkok Street Art and Graffiti (สตรีทอาร์ตกับกราฟฟิตีในกรุงเทพฯ).

The Shattered Worlds: Micro Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe

The group exhibition The Shattered Worlds: Micro Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe (โลกร้าว เรื่องเล่าขนาดย่อมจากเส้นทางโฮจิมินห์ถึงทุ่งหญ้าสเต็ปป์) opened on 3rd April, and runs until 6th July. The exhibition is split between three venues, though the majority of the pieces are on show at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s video triptych No More Hero in His Story, part of his Red Eagle Sangmorakot (อินทรีแดง แสงมรกตะ) installation, features the return of his saffron-robed monk wearing an incongruous motorcycle helmet. The character has previously appeared in Chulayarnnon’s short film Monk and Motorcycle Taxi Rider, and in his segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand. (Chulayarnnon discussed his depiction of monks in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

For his installation The Tower of Bubbles, Thasnai Sethaseree created collages of published texts and photographs related to political violence, which he then painted over, almost — but not quite — obscuring them from view. He has used this technique before, covering newspaper pages with brightly coloured paint in works shown at the Dismantle (ปลด) and Cold War exhibitions. A large slogan painted onto the BACC’s wall, “WHAT YOU DON’T SEE WILL HURT YOU”, makes the point that the historical atrocities overpainted by Thasnai may be hidden from sight, but they still have the potential to reoccur.

Red’s Objects Dialogue

Almost exactly fifteen years ago, on 10th April 2010, the Thai military opened fire on pro-democracy red-shirt protesters in Bangkok. The Museum of Popular History is commemorating the anniversary of the crackdown with an exhibition of red-shirt memorabilia, which opened on 29th March at the Kinjai Contemporary gallery in Bangkok.

The exhibition, Red’s Objects Dialogue (เสื้อตัวนี้สีแดง), runs until 10th April, the date on which the army launched their assault. Red’s Objects Dialogue has been conceived as an interactive exhibition, with visitors encouraged to share any memories of the protests prompted by the items on display (including an impressive collection of hand-clappers, t-shirts, and VCDs).

Red’s Objects Dialogue includes several notorious items that were banned by previous governments: calendars issued in 2016 and 2019 by Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra, flip-flops featuring images of Abhisit Vejajjiva and Suthep Thaugsuban, and a Pheu Thai promotional water bowl. The bowl and calendars were previously displayed at the Never Again (หยุด) exhibition in 2019. One of the most intriguing exhibits is a transistor radio (a generic design, sold in Thailand as a Tanin TF-268) which has been rebranded a “RED RADIO”.

The tragic events of 10th April 2010 have also been commemorated in several previous exhibitions: Khonkaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้) and Amnesia in 2019, Future Tense in 2022, and 10 April and Beyond last year. They are also referenced in Pisitakun Kuantalaeng’s album Kongkraphan, Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s short film Two Little Soldiers (สาวสะเมิน), and in the poetry collection ลุกไหม้สิ! ซิการ์ (‘burning cigar!’).

A book commemorating the victims of the massacre, วีรชน 10 เมษา (‘heroes of 10th April’) by Ida Aroonwong and Warisa Kittikhunseree, was published in 2011. There are also plans to publish a book based on visitors’ responses to the artefacts on show at Red’s Objects Dialogue. Like the Museum of Popular History, the National Library of Australia also has an archive of red-shirt ephemera.

Masterpieces in Black and White: Prints from the Rembrandt House Museum

Arthur M. Hind’s A History of Engraving and Etching is the standard work on the subject, and Hind praises Rembrandt as a singularly accomplished master of the art form: “In the whole history of art Rembrandt stands out as one of the solitary and unapproachable personalities who have struck their own style, and stamped their influence, for good or for bad, on posterity. In his etched work his unique position is realised to an even greater advantage than in painting”.

Rembrandt’s etchings are currently on show at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in Masterpieces in Black and White: Prints from the Rembrandt House Museum, the first leg of a touring exhibition of works on loan from Amsterdam. (After Birmingham, it will transfer from the UK to the US.) The exhibition opened on 6th March at the impressive Victorian neoclassical museum, and runs until 1st June. The sixty works on display confirm Hind’s view that “in the range of his genius Rembrandt still stands alone.”

Re/Place

Wittawat Tongkeaw’s exhibition Re/Place opened at VS Gallery in Bangkok on 30th January, and runs until 6th April (extended from the original closing date of 30th March). As in the artist’s other recent exhibitions, he uses colours and numbers as coded references to Thai politics. The Re/Place paintings are also a fusion of his earlier landscape paintings and his increasing shift towards geometric abstraction, as each piece is an existing work with new overpainting.

Wittawat has worked consistently with the colour blue, in his 841.594 exhibition and his Imagining Law-abiding Citizens portrait series. (The colour has a symbolic meaning, derived from the Thai flag.) Two paintings in the Re/Place exhibition — Orange and Blue and Blue Dots — depict contrasts between blue and orange, with orange dominating, and orange is the colour of the progressive People’s Party, which called for reform of the lèse-majesté law.

Similarly, Wittawat has painted dramatic sunsets in which blue skies give way to bright orange sunlight, shown at the Mango Art Festival 2024. The Re/Place exhibition features another of these sunset paintings, Fire in the Sky, to which Wittawat has added quotations from monarchy-reform campaigner Arnon Nampa’s letters from prison. He has also added quotes from Arnon’s letters to a second painting, Blue Wave.

One of the works with the most extensive overpainting is Blues Square, which is now entirely blue. In the centre, Wittawat has added a drawing of Arnon by the campaigner’s daughter, a reminder that political prisoners are separated from their families. Wittawat previously painted a portrait of Arnon, Captain Justice (ทนายอานนท์), which had a blue background in reference both to the Thai flag and to the colour’s idiomatic meaning (sadness). That double meaning is repeated in the title Blues Square.

The Blues Square canvas measures 112cm², like Wittawat’s geometric abstraction series shown in the Symphony of Colours group exhibition at M Contemporary in Bangkok last year. Also, the Re/Place catalogue is being sold for ฿112, and these amounts are not coincidental, as lèse-majesté is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.

Another painting in the Re/Place exhibition features a different colour and number: army green and thirteen, both in reference to the thirteen successful military coups in Thai political history. Thirteen Green Lines uses vertical stripes of varying thickness to indicate the relative timespans of each coup.

Nineteen Degree, like Blues Square, has been entirely overpainted: the original portrait underneath has been replaced by an intentionally uncontroversial view of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Nineteen Degree is displayed in such a way that both the front and back of the canvas can be seen, in a continuation of that painting’s exhibition history.

At a previous exhibition, The L/Royal Monument (นิ/ราษฎร์), Nineteen Degree’s canvas was shown facing the wall, leaving only its reverse on display. (At that time, the portrait had not yet been overpainted with the Parisian scene.) Nineteen Degree is the work’s third title: the original portrait was titled พระเกียรติคุณ กว้างใหญ่ไพศาล (‘his honour spread far and wide’), and at The L/Royal Monument the visible reverse of the canvas was titled The Masterpiece (มาสเตอร์พีซ).

Collapsing Clouds Form Stars

Som Supaparinya’s exhibition Collapsing Clouds Form Stars (ฝุ่นถล่มเป็นดาว) opened on 30th January at Gallery VER in Bangkok. It was originally scheduled to close on 22nd March, though it has now been extended until 26th April. (A catalogue will be published soon, featuring essays by Philippa Lovatt.) The centrepiece, after which the exhibition is named, is an installation of 279 ribbons, each of which contains a quotation from Thai political history.

These quotes include the notorious monk Kittivuddho Bhikku’s justification for the killing of Communists, a comment that set the stage for the 6th October 1976 massacre. Other ribbons feature lyrics by Rap Against Dictatorship, among many other examples. The quotes have also been translated into Morse code, which is played over a PA system for the duration of the exhibition.

The use of Morse code, which renders the quotations unintelligible, echoes an earlier piece of sound art by the same artist, Speeches of the Unheard. For this project, an episode of the podcast series Die Erde Spricht (‘the earth is speaking’), Som used computer software to turn extracts from political speeches into birdsong. The speeches included one given by red-shirt leader Nattawut Saikua on 30th December 2007, and one by Arnon Nampa on 16th September 2020.

The exhibition also includes Banned Books, an installation consisting of five books, banned by previous Thai governments, tightly wrapped in more ribbons. The books are: แลไปข้างหน้า (‘looking into the future’), ด้วยเลือดและชีวิต (‘the one-eyed elephant and the elephant genie’), The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today (โฉมหน้าศักดินาไทย), นิราศหนองคาย (‘poem of Nong Khai’), and ทรัพย์ศาสตร์ (‘economics’, Thailand’s first textbook on that subject).

The book Dissident Citizen (ราษฎรกำแหง) also used Morse code to conceal a political message. Several previous exhibitions — including The Grandmaster (สนทนากับปรมาจารย์), Derivatives and Integrals (อนุพันธ์ และปริพันธ์), The L/Royal Monument (นิ/ราษฎร์), and Unforgetting History — have also featured banned books. Sarakadee (สำรคดี) magazine (vol. 22, no. 260) published an extensive article on the history of book censorship, and the journal Underground Buleteen (no. 8) printed a list of books banned between 1932 and 1985.

Blind but seeing.Deaf but hearing.Dumb but will say.

Surajate Tongchua’s exhibition Blind but seeing. Deaf but hearing. Dumb but will say. features a series of small watercolour paintings, annotated with stamped slogans. An introductory text explains that the paintings represent “elite families — powerful figures who exploit and Consume the common people, Reflecting the imbalance and injustice suffered by society.”

The exhibition comments on the use of taxpayers’ money, Siam Bioscience, infrastructure megaprojects, and the deaths of political dissidents. Blind but seeing. Deaf but hearing. Dumb but will say. — its title written as three prose sentences — opened at Cartel Artspace on 14th December last year, and runs until 21st February.

Husain: The Timeless Modernist

Police in India were granted a court order yesterday to remove two artworks by the late M.F. Husain from the Delhi Art Gallery. A visitor to the Husain: The Timeless Modernist exhibition made a police complaint on 4th December last year, after being offended by depictions of the gods Ganesha and Hanuman touching nude female figures. The retrospective ran from 26th October to 14th December last year.

The works in question are the ink drawing Untitled (Ganesha) and the serigraph print Untitled (Hanuman). They have not been on display since the exhibition closed. All news reports of the police seizure have described the artworks inaccurately as paintings, and their titles have not been reported elsewhere.

Husain, who died in self-imposed exile in 2011, was India’s greatest modern artist. Hundreds of obscenity charges were filed against him in 2006 after he exhibited his painting Bharat Mata (‘mother India’), though he was exonerated by India’s Supreme Court in 2008.

1001 Movie Posters: Designs of the Times

1001 Movie Posters: Designs of the Times, released last year, is described by its publisher as “the most comprehensive collection of movie posters ever published,” and it lives up to that claim. Many of the 1,001 posters are full-page images, and all are beautifully reproduced in vibrant colour on matte paper.

With such an extensive selection, and more than 600 pages, the most iconic film posters — such as Metropolis (the rare export version), Frankenstein (the first example of a teaser poster), and The Man with the Golden Arm (designed by Saul Bass) — are all included. Editor Tony Nourmand is the founder of Reel Art Press, publishers of this and other books on the art of film.

Although 1001 Movie Posters features captions and credits for many of its images, and an introduction by cultural historian Christopher Frayling, it isn’t a narrative history of the film poster. Gregory J. Edwards wrote such a book, The International Film Poster, forty years ago, though it has far fewer illustrations. The bibliography in 1001 Movie Posters is also much more extensive.

The most comprehensive general surveys of poster history are The Poster by Alan Weill and Posters by Elizabeth E. Guffey. History of the Poster by Josef and Shizuko Müller-Brockmann — published in a single English, French (Histoire de l’affiche), and German (Geschichte des Plakates) edition — was the first graphic-design book on the history of the poster.

The Grandmaster:After Tang Chang

Vichit Nongnual’s new exhibition The Grandmaster: After Tang Chang (สนทนากับปรมาจารย์ จ่าง แซ่ตั้ง) pays homage to one of Thailand’s greatest modern artists. Using a diverse range of media — acrylic paint, wool, wax, and ceramic — Vichit has produced meticulous recreations of Chang’s works.

One of Chang’s most famous self-portraits, ตัดมือกวี ควักตาจิตรกร (‘cut the poet’s hands, remove the painter’s eyes’), shows the artist symbolically self-mutilated in an anguished reaction to the massacre of pro-democracy protesters that took place on 14th October 1973. Vichit has rendered this monumental oil painting as a woven tapestry, retitled Grass Land.

Chang translated the Chinese novel The True Story of Ah Q (阿Q正傳) into Thai in 1975, though it was banned and burnt along with hundreds of other books in the anti-Communist purges following the 6th October 1976 coup. Vichit has transformed piles of Chang’s books into ceramic sculptures using the Japanese raku firing process, a technique that results in black scorch marks, in a reference to the book-burning of the 1970s. (Sirisak Saengow also created ceramic versions of banned books, in Unforgetting History.)

The Grandmaster opened at La Lanta Fine Art in Bangkok on 11th January, and runs until 26th February. A lavish exhibition catalogue has also been published, featuring an informative essay by Sheryl Gwee. (Since relocating from the Sukhumvit district in 2018, La Lanta has been part of the N22 group of contemporary galleries, which also includes Gallery Ver, Cartel Artspace, and VS Gallery.)

Smell Like Thai Spirit

Smell Like Teen Spirit, a new solo exhibition by graffiti artist Headache Stencil, opened at Rere Khaosan in Bangkok on 20th December last year. The exhibition, whose title is a pun on the Nirvana song Smells Like Teen Spirit, runs until 4th February.

One of the highlights is Cheese or Shroom, screenprints of Thaksin Shinawatra’s face in various colours. The initial series featured yellow and blue polka-dotted prints, representing the cheese and mushrooms of the title. The artist has also added red and white versions, and Thaksin has agreed to sign the red edition before it’s sold.

Headache Stencil’s real name is Pang-samornnon Yaem-uthai. His previous exhibitions in Bangkok include Thailand Casino, Do or Die (ดูดาย), and Propaganda Children’s Day (วันเด็กชั่งชาติ). His one-day group exhibition Uncensored was followed by Uncensored 2 in Chiang Mai and a longer exhibition also titled Uncensored (ศิลปะปลดปล่อย).

Headache Stencil’s work is featured in two books on Thai graffiti artists: Bangkok Street Art and Bangkok Street Art and Graffiti (สตรีทอาร์ตกับกราฟฟิตีในกรุงเทพฯ). The Faith of Graffiti was the first study of graffiti as an art form, and Trespass is a global history of street art.

Fall

Nipan Oranniwesna’s solo exhibition Fall was held at Jing Jai Gallery in Chiang Mai, from 1st March to 2nd June. The exhibition included several works from 2020 that refer to events leading up to the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. An installation from the exhibition, Then, One Morning, They Were Found Dead and Hanged, was previously shown at the Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai.

Then, One Morning, They Were Found Dead and Hanged dominated the gallery floor, with capital letters carved from teakwood that read “THEN, ONE MORNING, THEY WERE FOUND DEAD AND HANGED. IT WAS LATER ESTABLISHED, THAT THEY WERE DONE TO DEATH BEFORE THEY WERE HUNG.” This text refers to Choomporn Thummai and Vichai Kasripongsa, two men who were hanged by police from a gate in Nakhon Pathom on 25th September 1976, after they campaigned against military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn’s return from exile.

Thammasat students staged a reenactment of the hanging on 4th October 1976, and the right-wing Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper reported this on its front page two days later, with a photograph of one of the students, Apinan Buahapakdee. Apinan bore a slight and coincidental resemblance to King Vajiralongkorn, who was Crown Prince at the time, and the newspaper accused the students of “แขวนคอหุ่นเหมือนเจ้าฟ้าชาย” (‘burning the Crown Prince in effigy’). It was this incendiary and false headline that led vigilante groups to storm the campus.

Nipan’s teakwood text appears on painted clouds, which are based on a photograph taken by the artist on 24th June 2020, the anniversary of Thailand’s 1932 transition to a constitutional monarchy. This metaphorical reference — the sky as an indirect allusion to the monarchy — has also been employed by other artists: t_047’s single ไม่มีคนบนฟ้า (‘no one in the sky’), and Wittawat Tongkeaw’s installation Creation-Conclusion (เริ่ม-จบ). Wittawat commented on the metaphor with the title of his painting It’s Just the Sky, Nothing More.

The gate from which the two activists were hanged was rediscovered by Patporn Phoothong in 2017. A photograph of the gate (simply titled Gate) was also part of Fall, shown alongside framed reproductions of a twelve-page account of the Thammasat massacre — titled Ungpakorn [sic] — typed by Puey Ungphakorn (a former rector at Thammasat) on 25th November 1976.

Patporn made a short documentary about the case, The Two Brothers (สองพนอง), and exhibited the gate itself at Thammasat in 2019. A split-second image of the gate appears in Tewprai Bualoi’s short film Friendship Ended with Mudasir Now Salman Is My Best Friend (มิตรภาพสิ้นสุดกับ Mudasir ตอนนี้ Salman คือเพื่อนที่ดีที่สุดของฉัน). The gate has inspired several paintings, including Jirapatt Aungsumalee’s ประตูแดง (‘red gate’) and Pachara Piyasongsoot’s What a Wonderful World, and the poster Just Because You Can’t See It, Doesn’t Mean It Didn’t Happen.

Bangkok Through Poster 2024Thailand Postlitical Fiction

The fifth annual Bangkok Through Poster exhibition opened at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok yesterday. This year’s theme is Thailand Postlitical Fiction: poster designs for imaginary movies commenting on Thai politics. Sixty-seven posters were selected from works submitted by artists, students, and design studios, and many of the posters are accompanied by synopses for the fictitious films they illustrate.

A handful of posters in the exhibition refer to past political violence. One example is a spoof horror film titled Cursed Siam (สาปสยาม) by Canyouhearcloud, referencing the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. Two posters refer to the 2010 crackdown at Ratchaprasong: All the Light We Can(not) See by Wonderwhale Studio (which uses candles to represent the red-shirt victims), and Animal Sanctuary by Chonlatorn Wongrussamee (which emphasises the killing of wounded protesters sheltering at Wat Pathum Wanaram). Two posters — More Conceal, More Reveal (ยิ่งปกปิด ยิ่งเปิดเผย) by Deepend Studio, and Unfortunately by Njorvks — highlight former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s statement that “unfortunately, some people died” at Ratchaprasong. Kawinnate Konklong’s short film Unfortunately (แค่วันที่โชคร้าย), released last year, also refers to Abhisit’s dismissive comment.

Most of the posters, however, focus on more recent events. Thaksin Shinawatra and his daughter Paetongtarn (the current Prime Minister) are the most common theme, featuring on ten posters: The Missing (You Too Much) (ผมคิดถึงคุณ) by Setthawuth K. (a spoof of The Shining), The Chair of the Promise Land [sic] by Genji Kun, The Zone of Shinnawatra [sic] by Nam.Ni.Ang, The Successor by Gaw Chutima, Hereditary by Kritsaran Hanamonset, The Loop by Thalufah, The Invisible Storm by Antizeptic, The Landslider by Sina Wittayawiroj (a diptych inspired by The Lobster), and Closing the Scenes (ปิดฉาก) by Thiraphon Singlor.

The student protest movement inspired almost as many posters as the Shinawatras, including Chorn Yuan’s A Smile. There are two that refer to 16th October 2020, when riot police used water cannon to disperse protesters at Siam Square: 16 10 63 by PrachathipaType, and Sky Flood, Stars Fall (น้ำท่วมฟ้า ปลากินดาว) by Tnop Design. Panita Siriwongwan-ngarm’s Here at Din Daeng Police Station, a Boy Named Varit Died (ที่นี่ (สน.ดินแดง) มีคน ตาย ชื่อ ด.ช.วาฤทธิ์) honours a 15-year-old boy who was shot at a protest in 2021.

Protest leader Arnon Nampa appears in two posters: The Lawyer Devil (ทนายปีศาจ) by Shake and Bake Studio, and The Letter (จดหมายรัก) by Tanis Werasakwong (known as Sa-ard). The Letter refers to letters he wrote to his family from prison, as does Vichart Somkaew’s short film The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ), released this year. Arnon’s fellow protest leader Parit Chirawak features in The Penguin 112 by director Chaweng Chaiyawan (a reference to Parit’s nickname and the lèse-majesté charges he faces).

Article 112 also inspired perhaps the strongest poster in the exhibition, Pssyppl’s Lèse-majesté, which depicts blue figures strangling red ones with nooses, a comment on the maliciousness and severity of lèse-majesté prosecutions. Bangkok Through Poster 2024 runs until 22nd December, and Neti Wichiansaen’s documentary Democracy after Death (ประชาธิปไตยหลังความตาย) will be shown on the final day of the exhibition. (The film was also screened in Chiang Mai last year and in 2022.)

Many of the posters will also be shown next year at Alien Artspace in Khon Kaen, alongside new designs such as a poster for The Brutalist featuring references to the Thammasat massacre. The Khon Kaen Through Poster exhibition will run from 4th to 27th April 2025, and will then transfer to Artcade in Phayao. Phayao Through Poster runs from 17th May to 27th July 2025.