Preview of Thailand Biennale Phuket 2025
Six artists give a teaser of what to expect
Titled Eternal [Kalpa], the upcoming Thailand Biennale in Phuket points to older cycles of time and rhythms beyond the linear understanding shaped by a modern, scientific worldview. It is led by a curatorial team comprising Arin Rungjang, David Teh, Hera Chan, and Marisa Phandharakrajadej. The exhibition will feature more than 60 artists, with around 50 new works created. We catch up with six participating artists to learn about their projects ahead of the opening in late November 2025.
Chantana Tiprachart
Chantana Tiprachart, objet a (working title), 2025, still from video installation, 9:23mins. Presented under the COSMOAMA programme for the 7th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (2025).
Responding to the exhibition site at Chao Fa Mine, Chantana Tiprachart is presenting two works. The first is a short film portraying the lives of labourers in connection to the creation of artificial sunlight. It is exhibited alongside an installation that projects images of sunlight into a darkened room, through a pinhole camera. “With the power of a single generator, entire ways of life can be irreversibly transformed,” Chantana says. “The mining industry, with its endless excavations driven by human desire, mirrors this insatiable pursuit, continually reshaping and redefining Phuket itself.” Taken together, her works reflect on the cycle of human life and humanity’s search for inexhaustible energy.
Thuy Tien Nguyen
Thuy Tien Nguyen, rendering of Press Club (2025). Image courtesy of the artist.
Thuy Tien Nguyen is interested in the waves of transformation throughout the island’s history and its during impact on the formation and reshaping of personal and collective identities. Her work Press Club (2025) is a large-scale sculptural installation made of bent stainless steel, motors, rubber bands, and reclaimed wood from Phuket. The structure loops through space like a skeletal conveyor belt, evoking systems of circulation such as baggage claims or ventilation ducts. Mounted within the steel frame are wooden architectural fragments from shophouses, fishing boats, and private houses. The structure is accompanied by a sound component that features songs drawn from entertainment and stage performances. The artist describes this gesture as introducing her personal sense of intimacy to the site, creating a domestic stage for memory, resistance, aspiration, and desire.
Nathalie Muchamad
Nathalie Muchamad, Breadfruit, Mutiny and Planetarity, 2024, exhibition view in 9th Asian Art Biennial (2024), Taichung, Taiwan. Image courtesy of the artist.
In her project for the biennale, Nathalie Muchamad considers the notion that “displacement has design memory”. Composed of furniture and textile, her installation tries to design a scenography that invites audiences to share the experience of displacement. Speaking about Phuket’s cultural diversity, Nathalie states: “As a historic port, it has long been a melting pot of different ethnic groups. This blending of ethnicities, beliefs, and customs was not abrupt, but evolved gradually over generations.” She traces the histories of different communities who make up the province today and shape this “slow cultural fusion”.
Serene Hui
Serene Hui, Tiger's Head Nail's Tail - The Scribe (work-in-progress image). Image courtesy of the artist.
Serene Hui’s Tiger’s Head, Nail’s Tail is a chapter in the artist’s ongoing research project inspired by her Chinese grandfather, who was a former migrant and a scribe in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The project centres on the role of the scribe within the Qiaopi (侨批) remittance system, a vital network of correspondence and finance that was a lifeline for Chinese migrants across Southeast Asia in early to middle of the 20th century. “My work tries to reveal a timeless human impulse: the urge to mediate and curate narratives,” Serene elaborates. “It explores how the politics of communication and the subtle art of storytelling are deeply intertwined with humanity's perception of its place in the larger, eternal timeline.” By recasting the historical Qiaopi system as a conceptual apparatus for navigating time, Serene also foregrounds a deliberate slowness that stands in counterpoint to our contemporary digital immediacy.
Andrew Thomas Huang
Andrew Thomas Huang, The Deer of Nine Colors (film still). Image courtesy of the artist.
Andrew Thomas Huang cites the biennale’s focus on non-human concepts of time as a creative push. “I am inspired to reframe the point of view of my storytelling and to expand my range to include human-animal-spirit consciousness as my focus,” the artist explains. He shares that the curatorial prompt spurred him to research and base his project on an extinct deer species in Thailand. The Deer of Nine Colors is a film and sculpture installation following a Thai trans woman who retraces her past life as a wild deer in order to find her true name. When she finds the courage to name herself, she transforms into the Nine-Coloured Deer from Buddhist mythology and attains true bliss. The project extends from Andrew’s ongoing exploration of themes such as Asian mythology, body memory, and queer futurism.
Nolan Oswald Dennis
Teaser image of Nolan Osward Dennis’ new work for Thailand Biennale Phuket 2025. Image courtesy of Nolan Osward Dennis studio.
Nolan Osward Dennis is particularly drawn to the idea of time-keepers within the biennale’s theme. They are presenting a new commissioned work titled izinyanga, which means months as well as healers. The word comes from Inyanga, the name of the Moon in Zulu. Nolan describes the artwork as landscape sculpture that acts as a moon-dial, keeping time according to the movement of the moon. “I am interested in thinking about the island of Phuket as a cosmo-social space in solidarity with other parts of the world through celestial connections,” the artist says. “The artwork allows people to read Phuket time alongside many other types of time: cosmic time, social time, political time, dream time, eternal time and so on.” In highlighting these layered temporal relationships, Nolan questions some of the hidden structures that frame the limits of social and political imagination.
This article is presented in partnership with Thailand Biennale Phuket 2025.
For more information on the biennale theme and curatorial vision, read our interview with Artistic Directors Arin Rungjang and David Teh.