Thasnai Sethaseree's practice encompasses conceptual projects and large-scale collages laden with coloured paper evocative of traditional Thai paper cuts. His work explores themes of race, immigration, cultural identity, politics, social memory, and time.
Read MoreIn the long-running conceptual project make it like home... anywhere? (2002–2014), Sethaseree meditates on the personal effects and positive memories of home that were shared with him by Thai immigrants in Chicago.
In the installations produced as part of the project, the artist explores the complex tensions between the yearning to return to a nostalgic image of the past and the fight for a better life in a new place.
Launched in Stockholm in 2011, Sethaseree's The Structure of Fear (2011–2012) is a research project that rendered the fears of people from all around the world into visual forms. The project took place around the time of the Arab Spring, several European corruption scandals, and the anti-government red-shirt protests in Bangkok.
Taking participants' responses to contemporary events, Sethaseree's team in Chiang Mai put them through two computer programmes that rendered the data into two-dimensional coloured patterns and structural lines. These were then converted into three-dimensional sculptures 'that show how fear is constructed and revolves around itself,' according to the artist.
More recently, collages thick with layers of images, text, and coloured paper streamers have become Sethaseree's signature.
Sethaseree's award-winning Untitled (Hua Lamphong) (2016) is a dense, politically charged collage layered on top of Buddhist monk robes. Past and present images of the Hua Lamphong train station, a symbolic seat of power and modernisation in Thailand's history, are cut and arranged together in layers along with text from the country's 2014 constitution.
Commenting on the nature of Thailand's covering-up and ornamentation of history, this imagery is concealed beneath layers of traditional paper streamers. The work is part of a triptych exploring contemporary and historic issues in Thailand.
Another triptych, It's unclearly clear, as yet incomplete (2017–2021), explores social and structural problems in modern and contemporary Thailand. Divided into themes referencing Hell, Heaven, and Earth, each work incorporates 30 to 40 layers of images, coloured paper strips, and monk's robes.
Situating these seemingly abstract assemblages within Bangkok, the base layer of each collage is an inverted image of one of Bangkok's three business districts. Layered on top is an array of diverse references including sky maps from the dates of the country's coups, lottery tickets, text from the Ramayana, and imagery of biological forms, cancer cells, and the 1976 student massacre. It is a holistic documentary of 'Thainess' that hides beneath its vibrant facade an underbelly of corruption, profiteering, and reliance on chance.
