Five Thai Contemporary Artists You Should Resolve to Pay Attention To

There are still those who choose to take the path less travelled. For some, working as an artist may seem an unorthodox undertaking, if not an impractical fancy, but for those who've devoted their lives to art – it is anything but. While there are artists who create art for beauty's sake, there are also those who look at art as a tool for transformation and resistance. More than just beauty and entertainment, art can be used to criticise, protest, reflect, and analyse issues pervading the modern world for change and justice.

These five Thai contemporary artists are just some of the kingdom's most brilliant and socially engaged creatives, whose artworks are grounded in sociopolitical and cultural issues and phenomena like corruption, labour, domesticity, the global economy, and more. If you have not heard of them, now is the time to explore their works.

Kawita Vatanajyankur 

The young and brilliant Kawita Vatanajyankur is one of Thailand's contemporary artists that you should set your eyes on. A media and a performance artist, Vatanajyankur graduated from RMIT University in 2011 with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art. She is known for her socially engaged works where she uses her body as a medium to exhibit and produce performative videos, objects, and machines.

She has exhibited her artworks across Australia, Asia, the United States, and Europe, and is represented by Nova Contemporary in Bangkok. One of her works, "Cyber Labour," is a series of live performances and AI installations with Pat Pataranutaporn that showed generative productions "between the artist and her cyberselves [to explore the issue] of human oppression." Other works have tackled consumption, domesticity, the body, oppression, and justice.

Wantanee Siripattananuntakul  

Wantanee Siripattananuntakul graduated from Silpakorn University in Bangkok in 1998 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (Sculpture). Since 2009, she has been lecturing in the university's Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts. Siripattananuntakul is known for her artworks that are grounded on "social, political, economic, and cultural issues."

A multidisciplinary artist, her artworks comprise videos, audio, sculptures, and installations that tackle socio-economic inequalities in relation to her own lived experiences. For example, her works "Living with Uncommon Value" (2012) and "The Price of Inequality" (2015) take on issues in art, economy, and society. To view her works, go here.

Piyarat Piyapongwiwat  

 Chiang Mai-based Piyarat Piyapongwiwat is also a multidisciplinary artist. Educated in both the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australian, and the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Montpellier Agglomération in Montpellier, France, Piyapongwiwat centres her artistic practice on "documentation as a method to expose and question the conditions and implications of our globalised economy and social issues." Her forms of choice encompass video, photography, and installations, which she uses not just as a means to keep records but to "map our inter-connected world through voices of individuals."  

Piyapongwiwat has exhibited her works in the homeland, as well as France, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, South Korea, Taiwan, and Cambodia, among many others.

Som Supaparinya  

Som Supaparinya is the woman behind the studio Atelier Orange and is also among Thailand's contemporary artists that you should be paying attention to. Born in Chiang Mai and raised in Lamphun Province, Supaparinya studied in Chiang Mai University's Faculty of Fine Arts where she learned printmaking and painting. She then went to Germany to study Media Arts at Hochschule Fuer Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig before returning to Chiang Mai where she worked as an arts lecturer in her alma mater.

Since 2010, Supaparinya has been working as a full-time artist. She is known for making use of different forms and disciplines in her artistic practice, from installations and objects to photography and films. She has exhibited her works in Thailand, Austria, China, New Zealand, Japan, and the United States, among others.  

Vasan Sitthiket

Vasan Sitthiket is one of Thailand's most prominent, established, and socially engaged artists, but for those beyond the kingdom, the name may be unfamiliar. Sitthiket is known for being a multi-hyphenate artist, even traversing the disciplines of poetry and music, and whose artistic practice is rooted in community and civic engagement. According to the Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB), Sitthiket's works centre on "rural [and] urban tensions, corruption, abuses of power, erased history, ecology, and nationalism."

He has extensively exhibited his works, including in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venice, Singapore, and more. In BAB 2022, Sitthiket performed versions of nang talern puppetry that included figures like Karl Marx, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin.