Arts of Thailand: An Interview with Dr Apinan Poshyananda on the state of contemporary art in Thailand, and Bangkok Art Biennale 2026
Bangkok is a city that never resolves itself. It glitters and it crumbles, it meditates and it riots, it worships and it forgets. It is a city of angels perpetually shadowed by its own Mara; its doubts, temptations, desires, missteps. Few people understand this duality as intimately as Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, the driving force behind the Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB) for all four editions since its founding in 2017.
Dr Apinan has been many things; artist, scholar, critic, museum director, government official, curator of global biennials from Sydney to Johannesburg, and commissioner of Thailand’s national pavilion at Venice. Yet it is the Biennale, now approaching its fifth edition in 2026, themed Angels and Mara, that has become his most ambitious experiment: a long-term institution that reimagines Bangkok itself as a stage, a school, a sanctuary, and sometimes a battlefield. “I’ve been tested all through my career,” he says. “What I’m doing now is letting curators do more work. I’ll be more in the background. Young colleagues will get more responsibility.”
Arts of Thailand: An Interview with Dr Apinan Poshyananda on the state of contemporary art in Thailand, and Bangkok Art Biennale 2026
Bangkok is a city that never resolves itself. It glitters and it crumbles, it meditates and it riots, it worships and it forgets. It is a city of angels perpetually shadowed by its own Mara; its doubts, temptations, desires, missteps. Few people understand this duality as intimately as Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, the driving force behind the Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB) for all four editions since its founding in 2017.
Dr Apinan has been many things; artist, scholar, critic, museum director, government official, curator of global biennials from Sydney to Johannesburg, and commissioner of Thailand’s national pavilion at Venice. Yet it is the Biennale, now approaching its fifth edition in 2026, themed Angels and Mara, that has become his most ambitious experiment: a long-term institution that reimagines Bangkok itself as a stage, a school, a sanctuary, and sometimes a battlefield. “I’ve been tested all through my career,” he says. “What I’m doing now is letting curators do more work. I’ll be more in the background. Young colleagues will get more responsibility.”
