Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 17, 2025: Thasnai Sethaseree, a Thai artist, painter (#2261)

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Artist of the Day, April 17, 2025: Thasnai Sethaseree, a Thai artist, painter (#2261)

Thasnai Sethaseree (1968) is a Thai contemporary artist and activist known for his large-scale, politically charged collages that explore themes of memory, migration, and the nature of knowing, often using traditional Thai paper-cutting techniques and vibrant colors. He was born in Bangkok, and now lives and works in Chiang Mai. He holds a master’s degree in visual arts from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in social sciences from Chiang Mai University.

His large-scale collages are characterized by their iconography and layering of cut and shredded colored paper, drawing inspiration from traditional Thai paper-cutting techniques and Northern Thai Lanna weaving.

For over two decades, Thasnai Sethaseree made prosperous criticism through his political activist work to activate a sense of time-out-of-join. By pursuing his academic motif in Philosophy, Political Sciences, and Sociology, “The Carnival” (2000) or Temple Fair was executed as Thasnai’s cultural project in the South side of Chicago. While working with the Thai community in Chicago, Thasnai presented an installation like a temple fair where Thai monks were invited to chant and pray; young Thai girl dancing to classical music; Thai film and Karaoke were offered to the audience at the drinking bar. Essentially, his experience of diaspora of foreign communities in the U.S. was addressed there while his focus on a common bond between people reinforced questions on an imaginative picture of what would make life better in another place. Feelings of uprootedness, which was raised against a sense of belonging, occurred again in Thasnai’s project entitled “make it like home….anywhere?” (2002 – 2014)

His artistic practice explores themes of memory, migration, and the philosophical nature of knowledge. Best known for his conceptual and relational works, often ephemeral in nature, he has recently expanded into sculpture and painting, with his shift to painting notably showcased at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco as part of a project organized by Rirkrit Tiravanija. His work focuses on political themes, violence, and regime changes, conveyed through multilayered collage techniques rooted in traditional Thai decorative arts. His semi-abstract works blend grandeur with a sense of melancholy, creating visually striking yet thought-provoking pieces.

Thasnai has exhibited his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions at leading art institutions. He participated in the Gwangju Biennale (2023) with an artwork titled “The Tower of Bubbles 2022” which utilized collage and oil pastel techniques. This artwork serves as a historical event of a unique mix of elements that define Thainess, while also searching for resonances in other places.

Thasnai’s solo exhibitions include Cold War: The Mysterious at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai; Some Deaths Can’t Be Buried at Yavuz Gallery, Singapore; What You Don’t See Will Hurt You at Gallery Ver, Bangkok; and Not Even Pineapples at Gallery Ver and Bangkok Art Centre, Bangkok.
Group exhibitions include the Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize Exhibition at Singapore Art Museum (SAM); The Way Things Go at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Safe Place in the Future at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila; and Symphony No. 9: After Number Nine, There Is No Number at Seoul Museum of Contemporary Art. Additionally, his work was exhibited in the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.

In 2018, he received the Juror’s Choice Award for Untitled (Hua Lamphong) at the Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize. Moreover, in 2023, he published the book titled “What You Don’t See Will Hurt You”, which has the same title to the exhibition at Gallery Ver.

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