ZA :

I believe that you have converted the former printing house, Thai Wattana Panich, into an art museum called the Bangkok Kunsthalle that’s ever-evolving. Could you share your thoughts on how much space influences the reading of an artwork, and vice versa?

SRP :

Bangkok Kunsthalle is an evolving institution because space is not a neutral backdrop—it is an active agent. Here, the curatorial programme is the architectural project. We are not restoring the building in a conventional sense; we are domesticating it, exhibition by exhibition, floor by floor. The process is slow, organic, incremental, and responsive. It reflects our belief that architecture, like curating, can be a form of healing. The notion of healing is central to our vision—not only as a curatorial impulse but also as an architectural ethic. Healing the building does not mean returning it to a previous state or executing a definitive renovation. It means taking care of it—inhabiting it, adapting to its structure, and allowing it to transform gradually. The building is treated as a palimpsest, layered with past functions and future possibilities. Each exhibition leaves a new trace: sometimes an air conditioning unit, sometimes a network of cables or suspended screens. Over time, these traces form a new architectural vocabulary, authored collectively by the artists themselves. When an artist creates an installation at Bangkok Kunsthalle, they adapt their practice to the scale, materiality, and conditions of the building. But the reverse is also true: the building is changed by them. This mutual responsiveness is essential. In the same way that artworks engage with the spatial and historical texture of the site, the site is transformed by the presence of the work. The institution is artist-led—even architecturally. Artists don’t simply fill a space—they shape it, extend it, and allow it to perform differently. We consciously avoid conventional renovation because it tends to operate as a one-directional imposition: an architectural vision projected onto a passive, inert structure. Domestication, by contrast, is a reciprocal process. It is a mutual transformation in which the building actively influences the artworks, and the artworks actively reconfigure the space. This methodology proposes a new spatial epistemology—one in which architecture and curating are not separate disciplines, but part of a single practice of inhabiting, constructing, and caring.

ZA :

The Khao Yai Art Forest is such a unique endeavour that allows artists to intertwine their practices with nature and allow them to realise projects that would otherwise be impossible because of the scale of the works. I was personally drawn to the whimsical Fog Forest created by Fujiko Nakaya in collaboration with Atsushi Kitagawara Architects. Could you talk about the creation of this space, and how it might have changed the way you experience art?

SRP :

Khao Yai is a place where art ceases to be an object and becomes an experience—where the landscape is not a backdrop but a collaborator. It allows for artistic practices that are inseparable from the natural environment, and it invites artists to work on a scale and in a context that are rarely accessible elsewhere. Fog Forest by Fujiko Nakaya, whose landscape design was developed in collaboration with Atsushi Kitagawara, stands as a manifesto for the entire Khao Yai Art Forest. It embodies our core principles: ephemerality, ecological sensitivity, and immersive spatial transformation. There is no boundary between artwork and environment; you don’t look at the work—you enter it, inhabit it, and are disoriented by it. It alters how we breathe, move, and perceive. The ambition of Khao Yai is to create a site for what we call Land Art 2.0—a renewed, context-sensitive, and ecologically responsive form of land-based practice. Unlike the sublime, monumental gestures of American Land Art—which often represented the apex of artistic will to power over the landscape—our approach is discreet, reciprocal, and temporally attuned. In Fog Forest, this distinction becomes clear: when the fog is absent, the site appears almost untouched. Small hills and shallow valleys suggest a natural terrain. Yet this topography is, in fact, a carefully crafted time-scape—an invisible infrastructure designed to slow the dissipation of fog, to hold it in suspension, and to create the conditions for its lingering presence. It is a landscape conceived not for visibility, but for duration. Crucially, Land Art 2.0 allows us to consider land not as a canvas for artistic imposition, but as a nurturing, generative element. In a few years, Fog Forest will generate an entirely new ecosystem of plants, insects, and microclimates that will exist only in this specific location—drawn by the constant presence of humidity and moisture. The artwork doesn’t simply inhabit the forest—it transforms it, both ecologically and experientially. As Fujiko Nakaya has said, “fog makes visible things invisible, and reveals invisible forces.” It exposes the wind, the temperature, the breath of the forest—forces that are always present but rarely perceived. This is the essence of Land Art 2.0: not to impose form, but to reveal the latent energies of the environment. To collaborate with nature, not to dominate it. To make us conscious of what is already there, yet remains unseen. For me, the project changed the way I understand art—not as something to interpret, but as something to inhabit. I aspire to reach a condition where art is no longer even recognized as such—where it almost passes unnoticed. The forest is not a geographic location but a mindset: a laboratory of slowness, of elemental thinking, where fog, light, soil, and wind are the raw materials. In this sense, Fog Forest is not only an artwork; it is a curatorial model, an ecological agent, and a philosophical proposition.

ZA :

In your experience of curation, how do you think the art world might have evolved over the years? Do you have an opinion on the ‘trends’ that dictate the making and consumption of works?

SRP :

I believe the term “art world” is increasingly misleading—there is no single, unified system. What we have today is a multiplicity of art worlds, shaped by different geographies, markets, institutions, and cultural logics. These systems coexist—sometimes in dialogue, often in tension. The protocols of a biennial in Europe, the language of a commercial fair in Asia, or the informal networks of artists in rural Southeast Asia operate according to different economies of meaning and value. Recognizing this multiplicity is essential to curating today. Within this fragmented landscape, I see a shift from objecthood to process, from permanence to ephemerality, from singular authorship to collaborative practices. There is also a renewed attention to ecology, care, and site-responsiveness—an interest not in art as a fixed statement but as a situated condition. Yet these tendencies are not global truths; they manifest differently across contexts. What may be perceived as a trend in one context may be a long-standing tradition in another. What concerns me is the tendency of dominant art circuits to absorb emerging discourses too quickly— flattening their complexity and repackaging them for institutional or market validation. In this climate, curating is not about responding to trends, but about constructing frameworks in which artists can take risks, propose new languages, and operate outside the dominant modes of visibility. Probably because of my architectural sensitivity, I’ve always understood curating as a way of making room—of creating an opening, both spatially and intellectually, for something unexpected to take shape. It’s about protecting a space of experimentation within a field that is constantly shifting. As in architecture, it’s not just about what is built, but about what is allowed to unfold.

ZA :

Since you serve as the artistic director of the St. Moritz Art Film Festival, and seem to be drawn to video work as a collector yourself, I was wondering what intrigues you most about the medium. Do you also think there is now an art market for the moving image?

SRP :

What draws me to the moving image is its ability to expand our understanding of space into the dimension of time. Unlike painting or sculpture, which present themselves in a single, immediate moment, the moving image unfolds—through duration, rhythm, repetition, and delay. Some of the most radical ideas and aesthetics about space are now being expressed not through built form, but through video, film, and time-based media. In this sense, moving image becomes not only a medium but a spatial strategy. This aspect deeply resonates with the work of Fujiko Nakaya. Before becoming known for her immersive fog environments, she was a pioneering video artist—one of the first in Japan to explore the possibilities of electronic media. Her practice bridges the perceptual sensitivity of the moving image with the atmospheric indeterminacy of fog. In both cases, she constructs spaces that are temporal, unstable, and immersive—where form dissolves into experience. When I founded the St. Moritz Art Film Festival in 2022, it was conceived not simply as a program of screenings, but as an urban project. In its simplest form, a festival is like a beam of colorful light—a temporary, luminous presence that activates a place and gathers a community. It is the most immaterial of forces, yet it has the capacity to attract people, generate attention, and transform the atmosphere of a city. In St. Moritz, the festival was a way to bring together art, cinema, and public space—to create a new form of collective engagement rooted in the moving image. Today, there is indeed a growing art market for video and film, but for me the real question lies elsewhere: how can we build sustainable structures—institutional, curatorial, and architectural—that support time-based practices with the care and complexity they require? The moving image is not a niche medium. It is an expansive language, and one that continues to shape how we see, feel, and inhabit the world.

ZA :

When you enter a home, what draws you instantaneously? And similarly, what pulls you towards an artist’s work?

SRP :

I’m drawn to what remains unspoken. For example, when I enter a home, I’m instinctively drawn to the library—not merely as a collection of books, but as a space of thought, silence, and quiet accumulation. A private library reveals a life’s orientation toward knowledge, imagination, and memory. It is perhaps the most intimate architecture of a mind. In its ordering and disordering, its juxtapositions and annotations, the library dissolves the boundary between the intellectual and the emotional. It is a place where thought becomes spatial—and space, in turn, becomes a mode of thinking. The same holds true when I encounter an artwork: I look for risk: the courage to construct meaning in a way that has not yet been codified.  Visit www.khaoyaiart.com to learn more