Thailand’s Art World Is on the Rise
With influences from across Asia, and a new wave of collectors and institutions, the country is taking to the world stage
With influences from across Asia, and a new wave of collectors and institutions, the country is taking to the world stage
When Dib Bangkok opens the doors on its more than 6,000-square-metre exhibition space this December, its striking sawtooth roof will be a crown on the new landscape of contemporary art in Thailand. A former steel warehouse converted by WHY architects – the same firm behind Frieze Los Angeles, led by Santa Monica-based Thai expat Kulapat Yantrasast – Dib Bangkok plans to mount exhibitions of works from the collection of the late beverage magnate Petch Osathanugrah. The opening show, exploring the theme of ‘invisible presence’, will bring together impressive sculptures by Korean pioneer Lee Bul and German master Anselm Kiefer alongside an installation by the revered Thai sculptor Montien Boonma. Chaired by the collector’s heir, Purat ‘Chang’ Osathanugrah, DIB’s programme will be overseen by the Japanese curator Miwako Tezuka.
Led by dedicated – and financially committed – patrons, institutions like Dib speak to a growing collector base in Thailand, which is ripe for further development. In recent years, growing the footprint of arts and culture has been a focus of Thai government policy. In 2023, prime minister Srettha Thavisin announced a target of 400 trillion Thai baht for the sector. Inspired in part by the success in Korea of initiatives such as the Korean Arts Management Service (KAMS), several cultural agencies have been established, including a national Soft Power Strategy Committee, and the Thailand Creative Culture Agency (THACCA).
An example of the success of such developments: the Thailand-set third season of HBO’s The White Lotus – starring K-idol Lisa – rebated 30 percent of their production costs through central funding. At a THACCA event earlier this year, the present Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra emphasized the ‘One Family, One Soft Power’ policy as a means of ‘empowering individuals with the tools, skills and knowledge to turn creativity into economic opportunity.’
The international standing of contemporary Thai artists is testimony to this growing soft power. Take Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who has showcased Thai experience and landscape in films such as the Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), alongside a parallel practice as a visual artist. His multi-channel video work Primitive (2009), filmed in a village in northern Thailand, was acquired for Tate Modern in 2011 by the museum’s Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee, spearheaded at the time by Korean curator Sook-Kyung Lee. The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, UK, where Lee is now director, recently staged an exhibition by Thai artist Jakkai Siributr, whose richly embroidered textile pieces evoke the experiences of his female forebears, including a touching monument to his deceased mother.
The theme of intergenerational heritage is found across art institutions that have opened in Thailand since 2010. When her children came of age, the thoughts of Seoul-raised, Korean-Thai collector Marisa Chearavanont (aka Kang Soo-hyeong) turned to her own legacy. A renewed commitment to patronage birthed the Khao Yai Foundation. Opened in early 2024, the foundation’s Bangkok Kunsthalle in the city’s Chinatown aims to promote Thai contemporary art, while forging a dialogue with the international scene. Its opening display of work by video pioneer Michel Auder was followed by an expansive exhibition by much-loved Bangkok-born Korakrit Arunanondchai. Three hours’ drive from the Kunsthalle into the countryside, more than 60 acres of land have been transformed by the foundation into the Khao Yai Art Forest, where Chearavanont and founding director Stefano Rabolli Pansera seek to sensitively integrate works by the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Elmgreen & Dragset and Thai stupamaker Ubatsat into the surrounding landscape.
In the country’s lush north, Chiang Mai’s MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum was cofounded in 2016 by the Asian antiquarian Jean Michel Beurdeley, his wife Patsri Bunnag and their son, Eric Bunnag Booth. In 2016, it mounted the first survey of Weerasethakul’s work in his homeland. Booth, who serves as managing director of the historic Jim Thompson Silk Company, also oversaw the expansion of the Jim Thompson Art Center, an elegant concrete and tile building in downtown Bangkok. The centre recently hosted an exhibition by Kader Attia and ‘Fragmented Reality’, a curated selection from the DC Collection, formed by US-trained Thai lawyer Dr Disaphol Chansiri, which includes Thai artists like Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook alongside international blue-chip names such as Olafur Eliasson and Kara Walker.
A growing dialogue between Thailand and the wider Asian art scene has been evinced over the past few editions of Frieze Seoul. Timed for the debut fair in 2022, Gladstone’s Seoul outpost presented an exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija: ‘SUBMIT TO THE BLACK COMPOST’ featured two robotic arms writing on the Gangnam-based gallery’s wall. Ever a champion of fellow artists (the same year, Tiravanija nominated Wantanee Siripattananuntakul to show in Frieze London’s Artist-to-Artist section), in 2024 he was artistic director of ‘ArtSpectrum’ at the Leeum Museum, a group exhibition that included artists from Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere alongside their Korean contemporaries in a surreal structure inspired by a haunted mansion.
This year, Sac Gallery – established in 2012 in central Bangkok – is dedicating its stand to several bodies of work by Prapat Jiwarangsan, whose digital manipulation of archival portraiture explores issues of social belonging. This marks a return of sorts to Seoul for Jiwarangsan, who in 2023 won the Nam June Paik: Post-Fluxus Sense Award with his film Parasite Family (2021), which was installed in Gwanghwamun Square. Sac’s program is often boundary-pushing: earlier this year, the gallery mounted an exhibition dedicated to queer artists from Myanmar, many of whom have settled in Thailand because of intolerance in their home country. This spirit is indicative of a new generation of Thai galleries, whose local identity is informed by an alertness to the global scene.
Having exhibited in Focus Asia at Frieze Seoul 2024, emerging gallery Nova Contemporary this year cut back on fair participation to realize its relocation to a larger space in Bangkok’s Bang Rak district, advantageously sited near the Hualamphong Temple – a magnet for international visitors to the city as well as a Thai icon. Chatting during an exhibition the gallery mounted in London in January 2025 as part of the Condo initiative, founding director Sutima Sucharitakul told me of the inspiration she draws from many London-based dealers, including Emalin and Sadie Coles HQ. Her main aspiration, however, is for connection.
‘I really hope for a strong dialogue between Asia, America and Europe,’ she told me. ‘What we need for a young market like Thailand is conversation.’ Frieze Seoul is shaping up to be just the place for such an exchange.
Sac Gallery is showing a solo presentation of Prapat Jiwarangsan at Frieze Seoul 2025 (Stand A14).
This article first appeared in Frieze Week Seoul with the title ‘Thailand Takes to the Stage’.
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Frieze Seoul, COEX, 3 – 6 September 2025.
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Main image: Prapat Jiwarangsan, The Portrait of Siamese Family no.5, 2024. Courtesy: Sac Gallery, Bangkok
