Rirkrit Tiravanija
Artistic Director
Born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work defies media-based description, as his practice combines traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action. Winner of the 2005 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum, Tiravanija was also awarded the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award. He has had exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum of New York, the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hirschhorn Smithsonian, Glenstone Museum, Luma Foundation in Arles and at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam that then was presented in Paris and London. Tiravanija is on the faculty members of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija is also President of an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he maintains his primary residence and studio.
Gridthiya Gaweewong
Artistic Director
Gridthiya Gaweewong co-founded the Bangkok-based independent art organization Project 304 in 1996. Her curatorial projects have addressed issues of social transformation confronting artists from Thailand and beyond since the Cold War. Gridthiya has curated various regional and international exhibitions including Under Construction, Tokyo Opera City Gallery and Japan Foundation; Forum Japan (2003). She has co-curated with regional curators on several occasions, including ‘Politics of Fun’, an exhibition of artists from Southeast Asia, with Ong Keng Sen at Haus Der Kulteren der Welt, Berlin (2005), with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, ‘Bangkok Democracy’, and the 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Bangkok (2005), with Rirkrit Tiravanija on Saigon Open City, Ho Chi Minh City (2006) and with David Teh on Unreal Asia, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2010). She curated Apichatpong Weerasethakul's The Serenity of Madness at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiangmai, which toured to Asia, Europe and USA (2016-2019) (Commissioned by ICI, New York); and served as curatorial team for Imagined Borders, the 12th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2018). Her recent exhibition entitled Errata, Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai, initiated by the Goethe Asia Pacific regional office in partnership with Singapore Art Museum, National Gallery, Jakarta, and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021-2022). Gridthiya lives and works in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, and is an artistic director of the Jim Thompson Art Center.
Angkrit Ajchariyasophon
Curator
For more than a decade, Angkrit Ajchariyasophon (b. 1976) has been wearing the hats of artist, curator and gallerist. The Thai artist spent his formative student years at Chiang Mai University in the late 1990s, a decade defined by Mit Jai Inn's Chiang Mai Social Installation project which established the city as an art centre alongside Bangkok. This environment had a profound impact on Angkrit's outlook on art and its relationship with social space. In addition to the regular exhibitions at Angkrit Gallery in Chiang Rai (2008-2016) and ARTIST+RUN in Bangkok, his key curatorial projects have included the 2013 Singapore Biennale 'If the World Changed’, 'Chiang Mai Now!' (2011) and Bangkok University Gallery's BRANDNEW (2016). While Angkrit has made works that straddle various styles, he is best known for his non-objective abstract paintings.
Manuporn Luengaram
Curator
Manuporn Luengaram (b. 1972) is a Bangkok-based independent curator, producer and researcher. She focuses her attention on the areas of contemporary art, digital media and social practice particularly in the context of Thailand and Southeast Asia. Since 1997, she has worked with non-profit art organizations in Bangkok including About Art Related Activities (AARA: About Studio/About Café), and The Queen’s Gallery, Bangkok. In 2007, she became a manager of Arts Network Asia (ANA), a regional arts network and enabling grant body, hosted by T:Works Singapore. In 2018, she joined the Jim Thompson Art Center’s curatorial programme team, overseeing artists’ commissions and projects. In 2020, she curated a two-part video installation by Apichatpong Weerasethakul at 100 Tonson Foundation, Bangkok. In 2022, she joins a curatorial team for Thailand Biennale Chiang Rai 2023. In her art historical research, she is a co-editor of an anthology of Southeast Asian Contemporary Art, a Thai version, published by Thailand’s Ministry of Culture (2015); a research assistant for ‘Artist-to-Artist’: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai, 1992-1998’, published by Afterall Books (2018) and an editorial committee member for The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader, published by National Gallery Singapore (2023).