Navin Rawanchaikul

Born in 1971, Chiang Mai. Lives and works in Fukuoka and Chiang Mai.
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Navin Rawanchaikul seeks ways to connect art with the lives of everyday people. Places of Rebirth (2009) was inspired by the artist’s journey back to his family’s homeland, the region of India that became Pakistan in 1947. Upon his return to Thailand, the artist interviewed Indian immigrants of his parent’s generation who also now live in Chiang Mai, attempting to understand their journey to Thailand and the process of making a new home there. Their stories illustrate how globalization has brought rapid and continuing change, constantly remaking geographies, impacting the people who inhabit these places, and often causing the idea of home itself to be detached from a fixed location. Navin’s art often describes his own complicated childhood, from growing up in Thailand and being perceived as an outsider to coming to terms with his Indian descent and using it as his motivation for creating art.