BANGKOK, THAILAND – 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.”

But the foundation is undeniably his. And it began, strangely enough, with a story about a displaced artwork – an oversized head. “You know the history of this, right?” Dr Apinan begins, sliding into a story that has become part of the Biennale’s unofficial mythology. “We contacted Ravinder Reddy, who’s a good friend, and I’ve worked with him since 1996. There was this project at Central with the government to have public artworks for the celebration of King Rama IX’s 80th birthday. We contacted various embassies and artists to donate and sponsor, and India, through the Indian Chamber of Commerce, worked very fast. They raised five million baht to invite Ravinder over and cast this big head at Ayutthaya. It all went very well.”

Then came the political unrest that changed everything. “We opened, inaugurated, and then, bang, the riots came. The protestors slept outside in protest and looked up at the head, I’m sure, with heated tempers. And somehow, because of her staring eyes, they interpreted, or misinterpreted, the figure as Durga or Kali, figures of war. Ravinder never had that intention. But this happens when public art gets opened, interpreted, and then misinterpreted.”

Chaos followed. The sculpture was damaged in the burning of Central World. “After the burning, the sculpture got damaged. We sent it back to repair, and when it returned, they hid it on the grounds of Central World. It’s hidden, even though it doesn’t belong to them. They don’t do the homework, so the work doesn’t get the placement it deserves. Literally, a masterpiece placed next to the dustbin.”

Years later, during BAB’s 2024 edition Nurture Gaia, Dr Apinan revived the work. “We asked permission to show it at the National Museum, which changed the context and intention totally. But when they finished, they took it back and put it near the car compound, like when you throw away furniture. It seems like they’re just waiting for someone to take it.” He shrugs, half amused, half frustrated. “Where will she go next? In the Chao Phraya maybe, letting it float around, or ship it to Singapore Biennale next time.”

For Dr Apinan, this wandering head embodies the precariousness of public art in Thailand: loved, misread, celebrated, forgotten. The Biennale then was built to counter that cycle.

“Previously, we opened in such a wide-ranging category,” Dr Apinan says. Where most biennials rely on invitation-only rosters, BAB deliberately kept the door open. “Many Biennials don’t have open calls. But from our first edition, we already received applications from India, from Tasmania, and from other places not usually considered.”

This openness is not merely logistical; it is philosophical. From its first edition, BAB placed cutting-edge contemporary art inside living temples: Wat Pho, Wat Arun, Wat Prayoon, spaces of devotion intersecting with the present. The result was transformative. “Showing contemporary art in temples made many young people go into temples for the first time,” says Dr Apinan.

It was risky, and it still is. “The government gives support in certain spaces. But I give credit to the temples, who allowed the risk. One piece stolen or damaged would be a scandal. Luckily nothing happened.”

Later, the National Museum allowed BAB to bring out 100 artefacts from storage to show alongside Louise Bourgeois and others. Risk, Dr Apinan believes, is the lifeblood of a meaningful institution. “I can now fulfil things I couldn’t do before. It’s risk-taking. Maybe we fail in some areas.”

From the beginning, BAB set out totransform a city. “In terms of bringing art ‘back to life,’ I would say the past couple of years have brought a lot of interest to Bangkok: the new dib Bangkok, the emergence of Bangkok Kunsthalle, Khao Yai, Thailand Biennale, all this shifted interest. So many international artists are coming. The buzz is building.”

But he is clear-eyed. “Our arts ecosystem still needs improvement. Using the SEA Games as an analogy: Thailand is very good at things that are ‘flash in the pan.’ But with the Bangkok Art Biennale, we’ve been steadily improving through four editions. The beacon in Bangkok is not just BAB; it’s the city and the growth in the art system.”

The Biennale’s institutional model is unusual. It is non-profit, non-commercial, collecting works, and appearing only every two years, almost like a “pop-up” museum citywide. “Because we are non-profit, we don’t buy or sell art. We collect art. We’re like a pop-up for four months every two years. We’re not in competition with galleries. We have different agendas.”

This structure allows both integrity and independence. “Galleries want recognition, and they’re happy when their artists get selected. But we don’t go for that. We let curators select based on quality and relevance to the theme.”

It also supports the entire chain of the art world that is too often overlooked. “For many years, Bangkok was a cultural desert. Many young artists had to change profession. Now we call them not just artists but ‘art workers’. They have jobs with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces. They get hope.”

The Biennale, he insists, is about the neglected middle, or the “in-between.” “Government policy doesn’t consider these ‘in-between’ people, the gap, but this is where we can help and offer platforms and spaces.”

For Dr Apinan, the Biennale must adapt the way the city does: unexpectedly, restlessly, continuously. “Every edition has performance art; we have experience. Take for example how in 2020, due to the pandemic, we went virtual. We adapted. People couldn’t send works, so we opened virtual space, and it became very strong.”

For 2026, his mind is on live performance: the kind that breathes directly with the city. “Performance artists can be very imaginative. Maybe the process of travelling from Cairo to Bangkok is the performance art. And maybe that’s it – they go back.”

Performance, he notes, requires everyone involved to perform. “It’s the process of performing, we have to perform as well, the curators, in such a way that the artists are satisfied, and the audience too. It’s complicated but attractive.”

This is what makes a biennale a living thing. “The alluring aspect is that when people come over four months, they will see something new all the time, and we want live art going on all the time.”

BAB has always placed emerging artists alongside titans. “From the beginning, we have brought in very famous artists and very unknown emerging artists. Why show unrecognised young artists? Because this is their chance to be next to Anish Kapoor or Antony Gormley, and be inspired. They may fail, but the opportunity is there.”

Sometimes these emerging artists create the Biennale’s defining moments. “The Standard by Phitchapha Wangprasertkul, who featured in the 2022 Bangkok Art Biennale, saw her spending time locked in a small, transparent box for the duration of the exhibition; it went viral because it connected with young people’s frustrations.”

Art that moves, confuses, provokes, this is what Dr Apinan wants. Not comfort. Not predictability. “We cannot predict the definition of Angels and Mara. The curators, artists, and people define it. This is the excitement.”

The more established the Biennale becomes, the less Dr Apinan tries to control it. “Many others have roles, and there are so many players in Thailand, not just Bangkok. The evolution will continue,” he says. “What I’m doing now is letting curators do more work. Each Biennale has new curators, and they fill in the missing gaps.”

He describes the institution in the simplest metaphor: “It’s like you write something, I pass the paper to you, you fill in, you pass back. The curators do the rest. It may come out weird and strange, but that is the challenge.”

What does he hope to see on the page? “Surprises both good and bad. It’s sometimes good to have something bad.”

Whether in the story of Ravinder Reddy’s wandering head or in the precarious placement of contemporary art inside sacred temples, Bangkok is always negotiating its angels and its Mara. So is its Biennale. The 2026 edition carries that negotiation forward, but the institution itself: its foundation, its openness, its risk-taking, is the larger legacy. “Whether it reaches your expectation or not, we don’t know. But the beacon in Bangkok is not just BAB; it’s the city.”

A city that is learning, through this institution, to embrace both its contradictions and its possibilities. A city that is finally ready to welcome art back into its bloodstream. A city where the angels and the Mara coexist, and where art, led by Dr Apinan’s restless vision, helps people see both clearly.

Photo Credit: Bangkok Art Biennale

Bangkok Art Biennale 2026 runs from 29th October 2026 to 28th February 2027. More information available here