As new art destinations and cultural hubs are multiplying across South Asia, Thailand has seen one of the region’s most rapid transformations, with Bangkok emerging as a rising creative capital in Southeast Asia in under five years. While the country’s cultural tourism has recently been boosted by the global popularity of The White Lotus, Thailand’s contemporary art scene was already gaining momentum, driven by a surge of private museums, institutions and grassroots organizations led by local patrons and artists determined to shape its fast-evolving landscape. Centered primarily in Bangkok, the Thai art ecosystem now comprises a rapidly expanding, multi-layered network of commercial galleries, public institutions, contemporary art platforms and cultural festivals redefining the region’s creative identity.
Observer met with Stefano Rabolli Passera, founding director of Bangkok Kunsthalle and the newly opened Khao Yai Art Forest, to learn more about the evolution of Thailand’s art and cultural ecosystem and how the country is swiftly establishing itself on the global art map, thanks in part to bold private initiatives like these.
Founded in 2024 by patron and collector Marisa Chearavanont, wife of Charoen Pokphand Group chairman Soopakij Chearavanont, Bangkok Kunsthalle quickly emerged as a leading cultural and artistic institution shaping the city’s creative landscape. Chearavanont is now one of Thailand’s key philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, art collectors and cultural figures, serving on international boards such as Tate’s Asia-Pacific Acquisition Committee and the International Leadership Council of the New Museum in New York.
Bangkok Kunsthalle defines itself as a “kunsthalle” precisely because it is not a collecting institution but a commissioning one dedicated to producing new works rather than preserving existing ones. Housed in a former printing facility transformed into a 65,000-square-foot platform for experimental art, the space focuses on site-specific commissions that respond not only to its striking brutalist architecture but also to the cultural history of the surrounding area.
“Our mission is rooted in the belief that the role of a contemporary institution is not to historicize but to generate: to create the conditions for new artistic and spatial imaginaries to emerge,” Rabolli tells Observer, articulating how the institution operates across multiple overlapping scales within the local art system, from curatorial strategies to architectural interventions and urban engagement. “At the curatorial scale, our exhibitions introduce experimental practices that foreground the process of artistic production, often challenging traditional exhibition formats. At the architectural scale, we invite artists to intervene directly in the fabric of the building, modifying walls, floors and spatial dynamics. In this sense, the curatorial program is the architectural project.”
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At the urban scale, the Kunsthalle plays an active role in transforming the surrounding neighborhood—not through beautification, but through friction, according to Rabolli emphasizes, noting how the institution has, from its inception, resisted sanitized gentrification by preserving the building’s raw character and working directly with local workshops and informal economies in the Yao Wa Rat district.
At the same time, Bangkok Kunsthalle seeks to bridge the local scene and the international art world, positioning Thailand as a generative node within the global contemporary art network. By facilitating international residencies, exhibitions and exchanges that bring Thai artists abroad while welcoming international practitioners to Bangkok, the institution is extending its reach beyond national borders. “Through these intertwined layers, we remain porous to the city, responsive to communities and committed to placing artistic experimentation at the center of civic and cultural transformation,” remarks Rabolli.
This dual orientation—local and international, inward and outward—underpins the Kunsthalle’s programming. Since its launch, the institution has rooted its work in the local context by collaborating with Thai artists who have gained international recognition while also inviting global artists to engage directly with Thailand’s rapidly shifting socio-political and urban landscape. Korakrit Arunanondchai’s immersive installation, nostalgia for unity, became an early keystone moment, while the inaugural show by Michel Auder filmed the streets of Yao Wa Rat and projected them inside the space, collapsing the boundary between interior and exterior, art and street life.
“Michel Auder effectively folded the outside world into the interior space,” Rabolli says. “Korakrit’s intervention, by contrast, responded to the residue within the building—transforming layers of ash left during construction into a new floor, a symbolic gesture of both erasure and grounding.”
One recent commission was Emma McCormick-Goodhart’s neon sign Glai Glaai, which was modeled after signage common in Yao Wa Rat yet installed inside the building. Fabricated in a small neon workshop just meters away from Bangkok Kunsthalle, the work brought the artist into direct collaboration with the local community. “Her work not only imported the visual language of Chinatown’s street life but also embedded its local production directly into the institutional fabric,” Rabolli notes. “This was not an appropriation, but a form of spatial and material translation, bringing the city inside while retaining its voice and texture.”
Similarly, Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece was reimagined for Bangkok Kunsthalle as a collective ritual. “The table, originally designed for six to eight participants, became a much larger public space around which dozens of citizens could gather, turning it into a tool and platform to exercise collective healing.” The act of mending broken ceramics evolved into a durational, social performance where strangers became a temporary community, united in care, slowness and attention,” Rabolli says of the installation, which the Kunsthalle hosted from August to December 2024.
This ethos of healing and attentiveness toward the community and the idea of art as a tool for collective care found another expression in the work of Silpakorn University artists Siriwan Simingham and Nalattaphorn Nanta, who, in what Rabolli calls “one of the most profound gestures in their program,” chose to heal the building itself through reverent observation. “They began by collecting tiny fragments of construction debris, shards of concrete and scattered stones left behind after the building’s partial demolition,” he explains. “Rather than discarding these materials, they patiently sorted them by hand, organizing them into a series of modular grids according to size, texture and weight.” The result was a “meditative topography,” a gridded cartography of remains where each fragment was given presence and dignity. “Their installation transformed a neglected pile of rubble into a contemplative field of order and care—an archaeology of attention, where healing begins through the act of noticing.”
Another site-specific commission engaging both the building’s architecture and its cultural history is the intervention by Argentina-born artist Nicolas Amato. Focusing on one of the few surviving architectural elements—the green terrazzo handrail and staircase spiraling across three stories—Amato polished the terrazzo by hand, revealing its color, gloss and embedded memory. Inspired by the year of the snake in the Chinese zodiac, he reinterpreted the curving terrazzo as a serpentine spine, a biomorphic, lively creature linking the building’s vertical axis. “His act was both minimal and devotional: a gesture of cleaning as tribute, of maintenance as art,” says Rabolli. “He transformed a functional element into a living totem—reminding us that sometimes the most radical gesture is to honor what is already there.”
Whether led by international artists or emerging local voices, each project works with the building, not merely within it. The core idea is to treat the Kunsthalle as a living, breathing organism—marked by dust, history, texture and time. “Our curatorial strategy will continue to support this logic: one that values embeddedness over spectacle, process over product, and the ethics of attention over the aesthetics of display,” Rabolli clarifies. “We do not simply ‘present’ international artists in Bangkok; we invite them to metabolize the city, collaborate with its artisans and leave behind not just works, but traces.”
Running through the end of July, the current show “I will meet you in a mere second” is a poetic, transitory reflection by multimedia artist Alia, who attempts to reconstruct her family’s past through lingering residues of grief, death and labor. Reviving shared traditions and reclaiming her lost Indian heritage, the project occupies the Kunsthalle’s Goods space, which is dedicated to work-in-progress, open thinking and “curatorial and artistic practice and rapid prototyping of ideas.”
Bangkok Kunsthalle serves as the urban counterpart to the more recently established Khao Yai Art Forest, where art is immersed in nature about 150 kilometers east of Bangkok. Opened last February on 161 acres with major installations by artists like Louise Bourgeois, Khao Yai Art Forest was, Rabolli notes, the original initiative—while Bangkok Kunsthalle emerged as an urban offshoot, “an architectural and curatorial spin-off that retains the same DNA but inverts the spatial context.” Other permanent installations in the forest include commissions by Richard Long, Francesco Arena, Fujiko Nakaya and a six-seat forest bar by Elmgreen & Dragset, K-Bar, an homage to late artist Martin Kippenberger.
Chearavanont and Rabolli have always envisioned the two venues as expressions of a single project centered on healing. “One heals the natural forest; the other heals the urban jungle,” Rabolli explains. “They are not opposites, but complementary embodiments of the same underlying gesture—a form of spatial and cultural care.” Together, the two sites create a continuum: from wilderness to city, from soil to concrete, from bucolic silence to noise. “Beneath these surface differences lies a shared commitment: to building institutions not as fixed monuments, but as evolving ecosystems—sensitive to their environment, shaped by their inhabitants and sustained by the rituals of making, hosting and mending.”
At both sites, the methodology is similar: artists engage with the human and natural ecologies of the place, generating a positive impact and helping restore original balances. “In both cases, the methodology is consistent and deliberate: art first,” Rabolli emphasizes. “Instead of beginning with a masterplan or fixed architectural program, we start by inviting artists to respond intuitively and critically to the space.”
At Khao Yai, the artists’ interventions shape the contours of the land—redefining the logic of the forest without overpowering it—while in Bangkok, their works domesticate the brutalist floors of the Kunsthalle, transforming raw concrete into spaces for gathering, reflection and creation. “The building becomes a host, a shell shaped by the practices it shelters,” Rabolli says, noting how reversing the conventional process by placing the artist before the architecture and the artwork before the plan keeps both institutions porous, iterative and alive. “At Khao Yai, adobe walls grow around gestures of walking, eating or meditating. In Bangkok, floors shift in response to neon, ash, ceramics and terrazzo. The work of healing is not symbolic but spatial. And it is always anchored in the trust we place in artists to lead the way.”
Bangkok’s art scene is at a rare moment of becoming. “It’s full of energy, yet not yet co-opted by speculative forces that often accompany cultural ‘booms,’” he says, pointing to the freedom to experiment without immediate market pressure. “This space—conceptual and economic—is critical for fostering genuine risk-taking.” The Kunsthalle’s role, he adds, is not to impose a curatorial vision from above but to embed itself in this evolving ecology—collaborating with young Thai artists, working with neighborhood artisans and staying responsive to the city’s rhythms. At the same time, the Kunsthalle fosters dialogue with international voices not to establish hierarchy, but to create friction, dissonance and mutual transformation.
Private initiatives like Bangkok Kunsthalle play a vital role, yet Thailand’s cultural sector is also seeing growing government support, marking a contrast with other emerging South Asian capitals. The country is embracing strategies that merge tourism with art and culture, aiming to raise visitor experience quality and attract international professionals who can further bolster the local economy. Bangkok’s historic neighborhoods, such as Chinatown’s Song Wat Road, have undergone major revitalization, blending tradition with contemporary art, design, food and nightlife—creating vibrant, cross-disciplinary environments that draw locals and visitors alike.
Still, while governmental rhetoric around “soft power” is growing, Rabolli observes that most meaningful initiatives are driven by visionary individuals and private actors. “The state’s involvement is often reactive rather than proactive, following trends rather than initiating them,” he explains, highlighting the strength of grassroots and independent efforts—often hybrid by nature, operating at the intersection of art, design, gastronomy and civic life.
Events such as the Bangkok Art Biennale and Bangkok Design Week—which now draws more than 400,000 visitors annually—keep expanding, amplifying artistic discourse and elevating Thailand’s profile in international cultural conversations. Several private ventures are set to launch this year, including the highly anticipated Dib International Contemporary Art Museum, slated to open in December. Its announcement came at a lively Art Basel Hong Kong event where Purat (Chang) Osathanugrah—who will lead the museum—played a set with a band instead of engaging in traditional networking.
Founded by the Osathanugrah family and designed by WHY Architecture, the museum will transform a three-story downtown warehouse into a 71,000-square-foot institution—the first major museum in Thailand devoted entirely to international contemporary art. Featuring work by Thai and global artists, it will foster creativity and education for local and international audiences. The project honors the late entrepreneur and collector Petch Osathanugrah (1959-2023), whose personal collection of more than 1,000 works by over 200 international artists laid the foundation. Under his son’s leadership, the museum aims to elevate Bangkok’s status as a destination for global contemporary art.
In March 2024, the Museum Pier quietly debuted on Rattanakosin Island at Tha Chang Pier near the Grand Palace. A passion project by collectors Kornkamol and Piriya Vachajitpan—founders of The Art Auction Center, Thailand’s leading auction platform—the museum opened with the exhibition “200 Years Journey through Thai Modern Art History,” which traced Thai art from the colonial period to the present.
More Thai contemporary artists and creatives are gaining international recognition. Bangkok Kunsthalle recently spotlighted the late painter Tang Chang, a self-taught artist, poet and writer active in the first half of the 20th Century. Though underappreciated in his lifetime, Chang’s radical practice is now being reexamined, revealing deeper roots. Still, Rabolli notes, it would be disingenuous to speak authoritatively about the Thai art scene 50 years ago. “Even 10 years ago feels distant,” he says, reflecting on how quickly artists, practices and languages evolve. “I moved to Bangkok only three years ago, and the changes I’ve witnessed in that short span have been profound.” He referenced a critical mass of new institutions, artist-run spaces and curators actively reshaping the landscape.
“Perhaps most exciting is the resurgence of video and time-based practices—led by masters like Apichatpong Weerasethakul,” Rabolli adds. Unlike painting and sculpture, these practices developed outside the academic canon of Silpakorn University and its Beaux-Arts lineage shaped by Corrado Feroci. “They reflect a break from tradition and a deepening engagement with contemporary realities, both local and global.” What it comes down to, he says, is that Bangkok Kunsthalle is creating platforms for experimentation without waiting for institutional permission. “In this sense, we’re working both inside and against the traditional system: we recognize the frameworks of cultural development but seek to rewrite them from within.”