Visiting Thailand Art Biennale 2024 in Chiang Rai

By BAHS Program

Biennale means “every other year” and the term is often used in the art and culture circles to mean the exhibition that comes every other year. From late 2023 to early 2024, Thailand Art Biennale came again and this time it was organised in the northernmost province of Thailand, Chiang Rai. Featuring many themes related to local histories and ecologies, BAHS program found the biennale so relevant to the teaching in the program. So, why not, leaving the classroom! 

With fifty something members, we embarked on the road journey from Chiang Mai city to Chiang Rai. Although Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai are the neighboring provinces, the distant between the two cities took around three hours to reach. This is partly due to the geographical area and social demarcation between the two provinces. But it was worth it. Many art works exhibited in the biennale were fascinating and they raised a lot of question towards the humanities.    

The first venue that we visited was the Chiang Rai Contemporary Art Museum, which was newly built for this biennale. There art works there were stunning especially the film by Pierre Huyghe called “Untitled – Human mask”, which uses the location in Fukushima, Japan, after being hit by the earthquake in early 2011. Another piece at the museum shows the ecological transformation where dust has become the new element of air environment. The piece spoke directly to many countries in Asia, including Thailand, which are undergoing smog crisis.    

Chiang Rai Art Biennale is a multi-site exhibition. In the following day, we rode the bus for another hour to Chiang Saen District. There, we met with one of the curators of the biennale, Grittiya Gaweewong, who kindly led us on a brief tour on the works exhibited at the Golden Triangle area. Here in Chiang Saen, the exhibition displays the collision between the multiple historical narratives, one of the Thai state and the other of the local and of the migrants. In the next two years, Thailand Art Biennale will be held in Phuket.