5 ปี #ธรรมศาสตร์จะไม่ทน: ย้อนรอยข้อเรียกร้องจาก ปฏิรูปสถาบันฯสู่ยกเลิก112(‘5 years of #ThammasatWillNotTolerate’)

The exhibition 5 ปี #ธรรมศาสตร์จะไม่ทน: ย้อนรอยข้อเรียกร้องจาก ปฏิรูปสถาบันฯสู่ยกเลิก 112 (‘5 years of #ThammasatWillNotTolerate: tracing the demands for institutional reform and the abolition of section 112’) opened yesterday at the Social Complex Building on Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus. Organised by the Museum of Popular History, it features photographs, newspaper front pages, and other materials covering the recent student protest movement.

The exhibition features a copy of a speech read by Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul at a 12th December 2021 protest calling for the abolition of article 112 of the criminal code (the lèse-majesté law). The paper is stained with Panusaya’s blood, as she carved “112” into her arm at the demonstration. It has previously been on display at the Bangkok Art Book Fair in 2021, and at Thammasat in 2023.

Poor Archive:A Prologue to Parallel 2

Komtouch Napattaloong’s No Exorcism Film will be screened at Noir Row Art Space in Udon Thani on 2nd August, on the opening day of the Poor Archive: A Prologue to Parallel 2 (อีกหนึ่งกิจกรรมพิเศษในวันเสาร์ที่ 2 สิงหาคมนี้) exhibition. In Komtouch’s experimental short film, a robotic voiceover narrates a dream in which a brutal warlord kills villagers with a sword because they disrespect him by not addressing him as their king.

No Exorcism Film was previously shown at BEFF7, The 28th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 28), Wildtype 2024, and in the online Short Film Marathon 28 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 28). It will also be screened next week at the Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค) arts festival in Phimai.

Toxic Remains: Parasites of a Betrayed Dream

Thasnai Sethaseree’s new exhibition Toxic Remains: Parasites of a Betrayed Dream (เศษพิษ: ปรสิตแห่งฝันทรยศ) opened at Gallery VER in Bangkok on 20th July and runs until 20th September. (His previous exhibitions include Cold War, in 2022.)

The centrepiece of Toxic Remains is Parasites, a vast collage depicting the pixelated faces of fourteen former prime ministers — many of whom have military backgrounds — surrounded by parasitic worms. According to an introductory text on the gallery wall, these creatures symbolise “the enduring toxicity of militarism embedded in the national body.”

The Bouquet and the Wreath

The Bouquet and the Wreath (ข้อมาลา), a retrospective exhibition covering Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s entire artistic career, opened at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai yesterday. The exhibition runs until 25th May 2026, and a second phase (إكليل باقة الأزهار) will be shown in Dubai later this year.

Another Side by Another Side

Kant Kantawat, known as Mr Halfman, has his first solo exhibition at GalileOasis in Bangkok. Another Side by Another Side runs from until tomorrow, and features an art style that he describes as Cu(te)bism, a portmanteau of Cubism and ‘cute’.

Cu(te)bism is one of a handful of new ‘isms’ created by Thai artists. Pan Pan Narkprasert’s 2011 Gagasmicism exhibition was inspired by Lady Gaga. (Pan Pan is now Thailand’s leading drag queen, Pangina Heals.) Noshpash Chaturongkagul’s exhibition Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind was held in 2016. Three young artists showed their work at the Neo Thaiism group exhibition in 2020.

Local Myths: The Intrinsic Aesthetic

For an arts fair at various locations around Thailand last month, 24 มิถุนาวันประชาชน (‘24th June, people’s day’), artist and musician Pisitakun Kuantalaeng designed a stencil of a board game that highlighted the various methods of suppression used against protesters and activists. A reproduction of the board game is currently on show at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, as part of the Local Myths: The Intrinsic Aesthetic (ความงามตามพื้นเพ) exhibition, which runs from 17th July to 10th October.

Remnants of Fading Shadows

Remnants of Fading Shadows, a retrospective exhibition of installations and video works by Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, opened at Silpakorn University Art Centre in Bangkok on 19th June, and runs until 31st August. It includes The Web of Time, which was previously shown at the Bangkok Art Biennale (บางกอก อาร์ต เบียนนาเล่) in 2022.

The exhibition also includes Freeze-TV, a 2015 video in which a speech by Prayut Chan-o-cha is played on a television placed next to the artist’s parrot, Beuys. The TV screen is covered with felt, though the sound of Prayut’s voice can be heard, and the piece was inspired by Felt TV (Felz-TV), a Fluxus performance by Joseph Beuys. (The parrot is named after the Fluxus artist.)

As the video progresses, the felt begins to peel away from the screen, partially revealing the news footage, and the parrot eventually breaks out of its cage and flies away, seemingly unable to bear the TV broadcast. Of course, the caged bird is a metaphor for the restrictions imposed by martial law. Tanwarin Sukkhapisit made the same point in her short film I’m Fine (สบายดีค่ะ), as she sat in a cage next to Democracy Monument.

Wantanee discussed the concept behind Freeze-TV in a 2023 interview with the Ground Control website. She explained that the video’s title came from the fact that TV was effectively frozen by the coup-makers: regular programming was suspended when the coup took place, and coup leaders always seize control of the airwaves, just as they take over the government. Although the video features Prayut’s voice, she noted that his name is not mentioned, so it represents the idea of a coup itself, rather than specifically referring to 2014, and therefore it could also represent a future Thai coup.

Affinities

The group exhibition Affinities at Nova Contemporary in Bangkok closes today. The exhibition, which opened on 26th April, features twenty-eight artists, though the clear highlight is Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video The Treachery of the Moon.

Araya filmed herself sitting on a bench with her pet dogs, watching a lakorn (soap opera) on TV. Just past the half-way point in the video, news footage of various episodes of Thai political violence — including the 2010 crackdown on the red-shirts, and the 2004 Tak Bai tragedy — are projected onto the artist and the TV screen behind her.

The cycle of political violence in Thailand is as long-running and as repetitive as a soap opera, a point also made in Sanchai Chotirosseranee’s short film The Love Culprit. Stills from The Treachery of the Moon were first published in the Storytellers of the Town exhibition catalogue.

LeMan

Six members of staff working for the satirical Turkish magazine LeMan were detained by police in Istanbul yesterday, after a cartoon led to protests outside their offices. They are accused of violating article 216 of Turkey’s penal code, which covers insults against religion. Images of the cartoon were shared on social media, and a riot broke out; police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at around 300 demonstrators.

LeMan’s current issue (no. 1699), published on 26th July, includes a cartoon showing two men — one Muslim, the other Jewish — with angel’s wings. The men appear to represent civilian casualties on both sides of the Israel–Gaza war, and greet each other as bombs rain down around them. The Muslim character introduces himself as Muhammed, and the Jewish figure says his name is Musa. These are the Arabic versions of Mohammed and Moses — the most revered prophets in Islam and Judaism, respectively — though they are also common Arabic given names.

Islam forbids visual depictions of its prophets, though LeMan’s editor Tuncay Akgün told the AFP news agency: “This cartoon is not a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed... the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Mohammed. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Mohammed.”

Censorship in Turkey

LeMan was previously censored in 2016, when an issue was banned due to its cover illustration. In 2022, a Turkish singer was also charged with insulting religion, as was a Penguen cartoonist in 2011. Two cartoonists were charged with defamation after caricaturing former president Abdullah Gül in 2008.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of filing criminal charges against cartoonists and journalists, most recently in 2022. He has filed defamation charges against the newspaper Cumhuriyet (in 2004 and 2014), and the magazines Penguen (in 2014) and Nokta (in 2015). In 2006, he sued the artist Michael Dickinson over the collages Good Boy and Best in Show. In 2020, he filed charges against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In 2016, Erdoğan sued a German comedian who recited a poem mocking him. The poem was read out in solidarity in the German parliament, and The Spectator launched an anti-Erdoğan poetry competition that was won by Boris Johnson. Ironically, Erdoğan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting a poem: in a 1997 speech, he had quoted lines from a poem by Ziya Gökalp — “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers” — and was sentenced to ten months in jail as a result.

Mohammed Cartoons

A Danish newspaper caused worldwide controversy in 2005 when it published a dozen caricatures of Mohammed. In response, many liberal newspapers and magazines in other countries printed their own Mohammed cartoons in solidarity. (The twelve Danish cartoons were reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2020, and Cherian George’s book Red Lines covers the Mohammed cartoon debate in considerable detail.)

Mohammed cartoons have been censored in Bangladesh, India, and Palestine. In France, a dozen staff at Charlie Hebdo were killed by terrorists in 2015, and the magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published a series of offensive Mohammed cartoons, beginning in 2006. Barely a week after the 2015 terrorist attack, Charlie Hebdo published yet another front-page Mohammed cartoon.

It’s about Time:Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) will close later this month, and the artist took part in a Q&A session with Sam I-shan at BangkokCityCity Gallery yesterday. The event was titled It’s about Time: Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People, named after an essay on Chulayarnnon’s work published by the gallery.

Chulayarnnon spoke about the two phases of his artistic career. His early short films were more personal, whereas his work became more overtly political following the Ratchaprasong crackdown in 2010: “it quite changed my life when the Thailand political crisis came, about 2010”. This aligns him with the “Post-Ratchaprasong art” movement identified by the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2), and he made a similar comment in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, explaining when he “turned to be interested in the political situation.”

In the Q&A, Chulayarnnon also discussed the consequences of the political climate for artists: “self-censorship is still existing: for me, sometimes I did that.” He contrasted the student protests of 2020 and 2021 — when Thai artists were more blunt in their political satire — with the current atmosphere: “for now, we need thought-provoking [art], but no need to be hardcore”. He also highlighted the threats that “hardcore” artists face: “I don’t want to be in jail, but I respect them.”

Sam I-shan’s essay booklet is twenty-four pages long, and has been published in a limited edition of twenty-four copies (each with a unique cover photos), reflecting the twenty-four-hour duration of Chulayarnnon’s video installation. The author identifies subtle political metaphors in the exhibition: she notes that the day-long running time “might parallel the cyclical nature of Thai politics,” and she argues that the piles of clothes in the gallery space “stand for all people disenfranchised by... Thailand’s political system, with some of these bodies literally absent, having been imprisoned, exiled, disappeared or killed.”

Pain(t)ing

Today is the final day of the Pain(t)ing thesis exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, featuring work by students from the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts. The exhibition opened on 27th May.

One of the highlights is Narissara Duangkhun’s No War but the Class War no. 4, a satirical commentary on contemporary Thai politics. The painting includes a depiction of a Reuters photograph taken thirty years ago during the notorious Tak Bai incident in 2004. Narissara’s work resembles that of Navin Rawanchaikul (albeit on a smaller scale), with its dense, brightly coloured collage of wide-ranging visual references. Her painting also features a slot machine displaying ‘112’, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.

Screenprints: A History

Screenprinting is a relatively recent technique, when compared to other forms of printmaking such as engraving, aquatints, monotypes, and lithography. Even the term ‘screenprint’ itself has not yet been standardised, as it’s used synonymously with ‘serigraph’ and ‘silkscreen’.

There have been several general histories of printmaking, including Six Centuries of Fine Prints (by Carl Zigrosser, who coined the term ‘serigraph’) and Prints (co-written by Richard S. Field, who curated the Silkscreen exhibition in 1971). Also, Fritz Eichenberg’s monumental The Art of the Print has chapters on screenprinting. But it was only this year that the first history of screenprinting as an artistic medium was published.

Screenprints: A History, by Gill Saunders, traces the origins of screenprinting to Japanese katagami and French pochoir stencilling techniques. The book also covers artists such as Andy Warhol, who produced Pop Art screenprints with Chris Prater, the printer who was “almost single-handedly responsible for the metamorphosis of screenprinting into a fine art.” Eduardo Paolozzi collaborated with Prater on a dozen screenprints titled As Is When, described by Saunders as “the medium’s first masterpiece.”

Screenprints is a comprehensive history of its subject. Published by Thames and Hudson, it’s also elegantly designed and typeset. Most, though not all, of its illustrations are from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, and the book is the first in an annual V&A series covering the histories of individual printmaking techniques. Given the high standard set by this first book, the others — on linocuts, etchings, and woodcuts, forthcoming over the next three years — are now eagerly anticipated.

ย้อนรอยแผลเป็น 6 ตุลา(‘retracing the scars of 6th Oct.’)

A display of items related to the 6th October 1976 massacre of students at Thammasat University opened at Thammasat’s Museum of Anthropology on 25th April, and runs until 30th August. The exhibition, ย้อนรอยแผลเป็น 6 ตุลา (‘retracing the scars of 6th Oct.’), is a scaled-down version of ก่อนจะถึงรุ่งสาง 6 ตุลา (‘before the dawn of 6th Oct.’), held at Thammasat last year. Both events were organised by the Museum of Popular History.

The current exhibition includes Hangman, a painted silhouette of a hanged student, displayed alongside a list of the names of the massacre victims. It also features the contents of the กล่องฟ้าสาง (‘box of dawn’), a ‘museum in a box’ released in 2021.

I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) is currently on show at Bangkok CityCity Gallery. The ambitious project is a video installation running for a whole day and night, divided into twenty-four one-hour episodes. The video projections are surrounded by large piles of old clothing, hoarded by the artist’s family.

I a Pixel, We the People features excerpts from Chulayarnnon’s previous work, edited to create a new narrative. It also includes footage of the recent student protest movement, filmed by the artist on 20th September 2020 (when a new plaque was installed at Sanam Luang) and 18th October 2020 (when students rallied at Victory Monument).

The golden snail motif has been a key feature of Chulayarnnon’s work over the past few years. I a Pixel, We the People begins with an extract from his short film Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง), before documenting the processs by which that film was banned from the Thailand Biennale. The first episode of I a Pixel, We the People likens the ban to the golden snail being “aborted while still in his shell”. (This metaphor can be traced back to a 2018 Dateline Bangkok post.)

Photographs from a meeting between Chulayarnnon and the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, the organisation that banned Birth of Golden Snail, are accompanied by captions describing the OCAC’s criticisms of that film, followed by records of emails and phone calls with OCAC officials and exhibition curators. There is also footage of a secret 1st November 2018 screening of the film in Krabi, on the eve of the Biennale. (Chulayarnnon discussed Birth of Golden Snail, and his other work, in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

At twenty-four hours long, I a Pixel, We the People is a wide-ranging film covering many topics, though the story of the golden snail is a constant thread. In this new version of the snail’s life story, the snail is the son of a propaganda minister in an authoritarian government (the female figure in Chulayarnnon’s segment of Ten Years Thailand).

The snail joins an anti-government protest, represented by Chulayarnnon’s archive footage of red-shirts commemorating the May 2010 massacre. The protesters are suppressed, initially with water cannon (coverage from Nation TV of Siam Square on 16th October 2020), and later by more violent means, illustrated by clips from Chulayarnnon’s documentary ชวนอ่านภาพ 6 ตุลา (‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’) and by new footage of dead animals.

I a Pixel, We the People also acts as a recontextualised retrospective of Chulayarnnon’s video works, and a reminder of Thai political and cultural events from the past two decades. Some of this material has not been shown for many years, if at all. Nothing to Say (ไม่มีอะไรจะพูด), for example, was an evening programme of fifty-three silent short films, shown at the Pridi Banomyong Institute on 31st October 2008. Produced by the now-defunct ThaiIndie collective, the Nothing to Say short films have since disappeared from the public record: even Chulayarnnon’s entry, เพลงของคนโง่ (‘song of a fool’), doesn’t appear on his filmography.

The exhibition opened on 26th April, and runs until 21st June. On the first day, the gallery was open for twenty-four hours, and the entire film was shown as a durational installation, with visitors staying overnight to watch all twenty-four episodes. Chulayarnnon’s previous exhibition at Bangkok CityCity, Give Us a Little More Time (ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน), took place in 2020, and some of his satirical collages from that exhibition are on display again as part of I a Pixel, We the People.

Due to the project’s marathon running time, I a Pixel, We the People has been divided into six seasons, like a long-running TV series, each containing four episodes:

Season 1 — Star Wars
(สงครามอวกาศ)

1. This Is Not a Film (นี่ไม่ใช่ภาพยนตร์)
2. In God We Trust (อาจารย์แม่ช่วยด้วย)
3. Peoplization (และแล้วความเคลื่อนไหวก็ปรกฏ)
4. The Impossible Dream (ความฝันอันสูงสุด)

Season 2 — One Family One Soft Power
(หนึ่งครอบครัวหนึ่งซอฟท์พาวเวอร์)

5. My Mother and Her Portraits (แม่และภาพเหมือนของเธอ)
6. Golden Snail (สังข์ทองลูกแม่)
7. Cyber Scout (ลูกเลือไซเบอร์)
8. My Teacher Is a Genius (ส่องสัตว์สิ้นตาน)

Season 3 — The Star Light of Earth
(แสงดาวแห่งศรัทรา)

9. Comrades (สหาย)
10. Let It End in Our Generation (ให้มันจบที่รุ่นเรา)
11. Water Is Soft Power (พลิงละมุน)
12. Big Cleaning Day (แดนเนรมิต)

Season 4 — The Massacre
(ฤๅเลือดไหร่มันไร้ค่า)

13. I Am Vaccinated (คนเช่นนี้เป็นตนหนักแผ่นดิน)
14. Next Life in the Afternoon (ตนยังคงยืนเด่นโดยท้าทาย)
15. Forced Disappearance (บึงดินบุคคลให้สูญหาย)
16. The Eternity of Golden Snail (กำเนิดใหม่หอยทากทอง)

Season 5 — I a Pixel
(ข้าพเจ้าถือพิกเซล)

17. Voluntary Artist: Nopphon (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: นพพร)
18. Voluntary Artist: Kirati (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: กีรติ)
19. Voluntary Artist: Angsumalin (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: อังศุมาลิน)
20. Voluntary Artist: Red Eagle Sangmorakot (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: อินทรีแดง แสงมรกต)

Season 6 — The Internationale Shall Certainly Be Realised
(แองเตอร์นาซิอองนาล จะต้องปรากฎเป็นจริง)

21. Artist Is Not National’s Property [sic] (ศิลปินไม่ใช่สมนิติของชาติ)
22. Long Live Microcinema (ภาพยนตร์ยิงให้เกิดปัญญา)
23. How to Explain “Monument of the Fourth International” to a Dead Snail (เรารักภูมิพลิงวัฒนธรรม ละมุนละม่อมนุ่มนิ่ม)
24. House of Tomorrow (บ้านของพรุ่งนี้)

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 (แสงมรกต ท่ามกลางสายลมมรสุม), part of his Red Eagle Sangmorakot (อินทรีแดง) 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: Khon Kaen 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.