Jim Thompson Art Center

The Jim Thompson Art Center, in collaboration with the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, co-organises an international exhibition, The Shattered Worlds: Micro Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the James H.W. Thompson Foundation. The foundation is named after Jim Thompson, an American architect who worked in Thailand with the US Army at the end of World War II. After his military service, he settled in Bangkok, became passionate about revitalising the Thai silk industry, and left the Jim Thompson House Museum as part of his legacy.

The Jim Thompson Art Center invites you to experience "Urgency of Existence," the first solo exhibition in Asia by internationally renowned French-Algerian artist Kader Attia, a pioneer in multidisciplinary art. This exhibition explores themes of postcolonialism and decolonization, offering a perspective shaped by the direct and indirect experiences of those oppressed and impacted by colonialism in the past century. The exhibition will be on view at the Jim Thompson Art Center from November 23, 2024, to March 16, 2025, curated by Gridthiya Gaweewong, Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center and former Artistic Director of the Thailand Biennale Chiang Rai 2023.

Unfolding Kafka is a biennial festival for contemporary performing arts in Bangkok. It was founded by the Thai choreographer Jitti Chompee. He was inspired to establish a festival platform for contemporary dance in Thailand. The 5th edition of the festival, which not only celebrates its ten-year anniversary but also commemorates the centennial anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death, will be the most ambitious yet.

The Jim Thompson Art Center is pleased to present “Fragmented Reality”, an exhibition of contemporary art from the DC Collection, founded by Dr. Disaphol Chansiri, a renowned collector of contemporary art from both Thailand and beyond. He is a member of the board of trustees at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.

Deeply immersed in materiality and spirituality, Trương Công Tùng's solo exhibition offers a poetic yet haunting perspective on various complicated issues in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. From an installation made of natural and artificial elements that he foraged to a video artwork that interlaces the visuals and sounds from his hometown in Gia Lai Province.

Nomad refers to individuals who lack a fixed habitation and instead move from place to place. Appropriating the concept of nomadic existence, this exhibition reimagines the fluidity of one's identity and the multitude of homelands, which are fundamental conditions of Asia.

Lam Loke, The World of Molam is an exhibition on Molam, the traditional music and theater genre from Isan (Northeast Thailand) and Laos. It is a key part of the identity of ethnic Laotians, for whom it is an expression of pride and joy.

Echoed Tranquility is an art exhibition that delicately captures the essence of tranquility that emerges after conflicts. Through subtle and introspective artworks, the exhibition explores the journey of understanding and resilience in the aftermath of strife.

A solo show by Rushdi Anwar Curated by Zoe Butt

Homo Urbanus. A Citymatographic Odyssey is an on-going project and touring exhibition by the artist duo, Bêka & Lemoine, and was shown in Bordeaux, Prague, Berlin, Sao Paulo, and Basel. The exhibition is conceived as a free-wheeling journey around the world, an immersive environment that puts the strange species of urban man under the microscope while offering a vibrant tribute to what we have been most cruelly deprived of in times of lockdown and social distancing: namely public spaces.

How Many Worlds Are We? explores and distances itself from traditional binary oppositions between notions of East and West considering the ways they can be positively articulated in contemporary artistic and cultural practices.

Germaine Krull was a citizen of the world, an artist, a revolutionary, a war journalist and one of the first women to manage a hotel in Bangkok. Germaine Krull, born in 1897 in Posen, has re-invented herself and her life on many occasions.

Uncountable Time, the group exhibition by Thai artists present video, photography, and installation works refer to the notion of “Duration” or uncountable time.

Curated by Melanie Pocock and Kittima Chareeprasit A exhibition organised in collaboration with Ikon and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum at Jim Thompson Art Center

By Kay Walkowiak (Austria) In collaboration with Teerawat Kage Mulvilai (Thailand) Curated by Stephanie Damianitsch (Austria)

Unfolding Kafka Festival is a biennial platform for outstanding international artistic exchanges that enrich contemporary arts in Thailand. The grotesque universe of Franz Kafka blurs the line between human and non-human by allowing us to reflect on the otherness through humanized creatures. The 4th edition of the festival brought together international artists from multifaceted backgrounds to share their diverse approaches to conceptual creation.

Curated by Bruno Lemercier, Senior Conservator, James H.W. Thompson Foundation, Bangkok

Shadow Dancing: Where Can We Find a Silver Lining in Challenging Times? is a follow-up exhibition to Challenging Time, Artists and Curatorial Exchange, and Research Residency Program between Thailand and Taiwan 2020, an experimental online exchange and artists’ research residency under a tele-collaboration between the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok and Hong Gah Museum in Taipei. Apart from expanding the existing network between Thailand and Taiwan's art communities, this exhibition functions as a collaboration between curators, artists, and specialists, including audiences; it is a collective composition that advocates the value of conversation, connectivity, and compassion as a model for being in this world during the current challenging times.

FUTURE TENSE is the inaugural exhibition of the new Jim Thompson Art Center (JTAC) and is being held to celebrate the completion of the building, which has been under construction since 2018. The 14 participating artists present works that deal with the aftermath of the Cold War, the remnants of which still resonate today. It is also reflexive in the sense that the artists have considered their own beliefs, judgments and artistic practices during the research process.

The Jim Thompson Art Center and Danar Hadi Museum, Surakarta are pleased to present POLA – Patterns of Meaning Exhibition, curated by Mella Jaarsma, a leading Dutch artist and curator based in Yokyakarta, Indonesia. The exhibition is the intersection between the traditional batik from the Danar Hadi Museum Collection and the new commission works by Indonesian contemporary artists. It explores the significant role of the batik in Indonesia’s history and cultural identity. The meaning of batik has changed over the years and its connotations relate to the various aspects of Indonesian culture and society.

The Jim Thompson Art Center, KADIST, and Para Site, with the support of the French Embassy in Thailand, are pleased to present the major traveling and transforming exhibition Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs, based on several intertwined lines of tension and narratives found today in the realities, artistic and cultural production, and contemporary thought in the Asian sphere and beyond.

People, Money, Ghosts (Movement as Metaphor) explores how the travel and migration of populations and industries, ideas and spiritual beliefs, aesthetics and technologies, and artists themselves are continually remaking our world—within and beyond the region we call Southeast Asia—and how this is manifested in the practices of the exhibiting artists. That is, the exhibition is about the process of movement itself as the hinge on which the works turn, rather than about questions that can be said to inhere in any single location. All of the exhibited works were created not in the artists’ ‘home’ cities, but rather in distant sites charged with locally-specific meanings, both historical and contemporary. 

Continuing our focus on regional perspective, the Jim Thompson Art Center is pleased to present The Game | Viet Nam by LE Brothers, the twin artists based in Hue, Vietnam, and curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani, an Italian curator based in London. 

The Jim Thompson Art Center is pleased to present a video installation 2012-2555, 2556, 2557 by New York-based Korakrit Arunanondchai, an acclaimed young artist of international renown. This is his first solo show in Thailand and follows his most comprehensive solo exhibitions to date at MoMA PS1 in New York in 2014, Palais de Tokyo, a modern and contemporary museum in Paris and UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, PRC in 2015.

The Jim Thompson Art Center is pleased to present an exhibition of The Making of Golden Teardrop. This is a significant work of Arin Rungjang, a Thai artist of international renown, a new interpretation of history by using the dessert Thong Yod as a starting point. The exhibition features more than 5,000 small brass sculptures in the form of Thong Yod and a 30 minutes video documentary together with photographs and the research documents he used