Art exhibitions this September

It starts with a body. Or rather, five of them. Not the kind you scroll past on your feed, but ones reimagined by figurative artists who use flesh, gesture and scene to ask what it means to be human. The Figure Out exhibition isn’t just about looking – it’s about peeling back the layers of selfhood, and maybe spotting fragments of your own reflection in the paint. Art has always been a conversation starter, a way of speaking without opening your mouth. Here, it becomes something more intimate, a diary written in colour and line. Life’s highs and lows are stitched into these works: bruises, longings, quirks, joy. The result? A reminder that identity is messy, tender and gloriously individual. You don’t need to fit a template – only to figure yourself out.

Until September 28. Free. ARDEL Gallery of Modern Art, 10am-6pm

Colour isn’t just decoration, it’s shorthand for everything we can’t quite say out loud. A blush of pink, the thud of red, the quiet ache of blue – it’s a vocabulary that sidesteps grammar and dives straight into the gut. This exhibition, born from a collaboration between a Thai space and Seoul’s L Gallery, leans into that idea with six Korean artists who treat colour like a confession booth. 2Myoung twists play into sculpture, Im Solji sketches storybook daydreams, Kim Ok-Jin finds solitude in the city’s shadows, Lee Jaeyual paints landscapes that slip between folklore and neon. Suzy Q sends her alter-ego Moo wandering through questions of selfhood, while Qwaya steadies the room with soft green and blue oils. Together, they remind us colour is never passive – it’s always speaking.

September 5-October 12. Free. Maison JE Bangkok, 11am-7pm

The noise, the colour, the sense that anything could happen. Fighting Bomberland at Central World takes that same energy and bends it into something gentler – a playground for anyone who’s felt their spark slip away. It isn’t pitched as a fix-all, more like a soft nudge that whispers you’re not the only one stumbling through the chaos. Between oversized characters, playful installations and game stalls, the mood is equal parts silly and soothing. Claw machines guard prizes dreamt up by artists, workshops slow the pace with brushes and paint, and carnival booths swap tat for keepsakes you won’t find elsewhere. The point isn’t to win, really – it’s to remember what it feels like to want to try again.

September 8-14. Free. Central World, 10am-10pm

Imagine stepping into a gallery where the walls don’t just hold pictures, they talk back. That’s the energy of this experimental project, where five illustrators – Coma, Mariko Toey, Rerunn, Tableteee and Winmahun – have built their own miniature worlds inside something called a Showcube. The trick? Appropriation. Not the dry academic kind, but a gleeful borrowing of art history’s most familiar faces and shapes, reworked until they look entirely new. One cube might feel playful, another unsettling, a third strangely intimate. Together they make a maze that’s less about staring politely and more about getting lost inside someone else’s imagination. And because no exhibition feels complete without your fingerprints on it, there’s a final challenge: stamp out your own identity, and see who you might become.

Until October 19. Free. Mun Mun Art Destination, 10.30am-7pm

When was the last time you noticed yourself breathing – not the rushed, shallow kind you do on the commute, but a slow inhale that reminds you you’re still here? Folded Embrace takes that simple act and turns it into something visible. The artist has built an entire language out of paper, folding and colouring it until each crease feels like a pulse, each hue like a memory resurfacing. What might look fragile at first glance carries weight, a reminder that tenderness doesn’t cancel out strength. Some works feel like diary entries, others like half-forgotten dreams pressed flat, yet all hold the same quiet insistence: to pay attention. It isn’t about spectacle. It’s about catching yourself in the moment, and holding on just long enough to feel it.

Until September 29. Free. Baansuan Sudawan, 10am-6pm

Think of it as a crowded dinner table where everyone’s talking at once, yet somehow the chaos makes sense. This exhibition corrals more than 60 Thai artists into one room, their works hung shoulder to shoulder, a chorus rather than a solo. The range is dizzying: established names brush up against fresh voices, delicate sketches neighbour bold experiments, quiet meditations sit beside loud declarations. What ties them together isn’t scale or spectacle, but a shared insistence that even the smallest canvas can carry weight. Wander long enough and you start to see the threads – moments of tenderness, bursts of defiance, reflections of a country balancing tradition with reinvention. Each piece may speak in its own accent, but together they sound like a generation thinking out loud.

Until September 24. Free. La Lanta Fine Art, 10am-7pm

It began with a diary. Maharani Mancanagara found her late grandfather’s notebook, the scribbles of a man once locked away as a political prisoner, and suddenly the gaps in history books had names, faces and memories. That discovery didn’t just alter her – it redirected her entirely, setting her up as a storyteller for those who were quietly erased.

Her chosen medium is turmeric. Yes, the kitchen spice, but in her hands it stops being culinary and becomes alchemical: a root that carries survival, wisdom, pre-colonial knowledge passed through generations despite colonial disruption. Its yellow stains aren’t just pigment, they’re testimony. What makes this project compelling is how it refuses to sit still as ‘art’. It doubles as memorial, as medicine, as a bridge between West Sumatra and Southern Thailand, showing that borders can heal as much as they divide.

Until October 4. Free. Warin Lab Contemporary, 10.30am-7.30pm

Meet Starfy, a starfish with amnesia and a restless urge to look skyward. For Korean artist Lee Yeonwoo, this lost little creature isn’t just a toy – it’s a mirror. Starfy Universe, his first solo show, transforms the character into paintings and hand-painted sculptures that double as fragments of autobiography. The story goes like this: Starfy wakes beneath the night sky, unsure of who they are, but convinced those distant lights might hold the answer. From there begins a cosmic wander, shape-shifting to survive whatever world comes next. It’s whimsical, yes, but also quietly profound. Every piece folds back onto Lee himself, tracing resilience, longing and the strange comfort of reinvention. Think less cartoon mascot, more alter ego navigating the chaos of memory and identity.

Until October 5. Free. Trendy Gallery, River City Bangkok, 10am-7pm

Imagine walking into a room flooded with red, green and blue – pure light, stripped to its essentials, yet somehow unfamiliar. That’s the entry point for this exhibition, which brings together 1,000 photographs chosen from an open call, each one a tiny spark in a bigger conversation. Here, though, it’s treated like raw material for storytelling. The result feels less like a gallery and more like stepping into a prism, where photographs don’t hang politely but spill out in waves of colour. It’s part archive, part experiment, and entirely immersive – a reminder that photography is still finding new ways to reinvent how we look.

Until October 19. Free. Mun Mun Art Destination, 10.30am-7pm

Bangkok once held a place in cinema that slipped quietly from memory. The International Film Festival, which for years drew attention alongside Osaka and Busan, disappeared after 2008, leaving only whispers of screenings and red carpets in the city’s imagination. Now it returns, 16 years later, not with nostalgia but with ambition. Curated by the Thailand Creative Culture Agency in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Promotion and local cinemas, the festival opens on September 29 with Tee Yod 3 (Death Whisperer 3), a Thai production that anchors the program. Over 200 films from around the globe will fill screens across the city, offering a pulse of contemporary storytelling. For Bangkok, it is both a revival and a reminder that the world’s cinema can still converge in unexpected, exhilarating ways.

September 27-October 15. Cinemas across Bangkok.

The launch of TEA Art Hub unfolds like a conversation between worlds – Japan and East Asia on one hand, Thailand’s restless creative energy on the other. Across its halls, art, film, animation and live performance blur into something that feels like dreamscape. At its core is Poetic Machines & Paper Heroes: From Quiet Determination to Daring Dreams, an exhibition that recasts the calm resolve of Japanese makers through paper robots, imagined heroes, mechanical fantasies and moving images. Around it spins a constellation of rare film screenings, shorts, video art, theatre and music performed live alongside the cinema’s glow. A Mini Art Fair gathers artists, galleries and brands in a jumble of cool, cute and defiant originality.

August 16-17 and 23-24. Free. TEA Art Hub, 3pm-9pm

The Magicians arrive in Bangkok as if the city itself had conjured them. The theatre becomes a labyrinth of neon streets and impossible corners, inhabited by five illusionists from Spain, South Korea, China and Japan – young magicians whose tricks feel less like sleight of hand and more like bending reality. For the first time in Thailand, their worlds collide, guided by VK.Vich, whose BMC World Performing Arts Award hints at the precision and theatricality he brings to the stage. Produced by Get Live Management in collaboration with VICH Production. Each illusion spins not only wonder but a fleeting sense that the impossible might be waiting just around the corner.

September 20-21. B1,200-3,000 via here. M Theatre, 2pm and 6pm

75 years after Charles Schulz first drew a small dog with improbable dreams, Snoopy is still everywhere – dancing on T-shirts, perched on mugs, drifting across the cultural imagination with the ease of someone who never grew up. This anniversary exhibition, arriving in Bangkok for the first time, asks what it means for a cartoon beagle to outlast presidents, wars and changing fashions. More than 100 works are on display, gathered across four zones that slip between art, couture, pop culture and nostalgia. Contributions from Thai and international artists sit beside collaborations with major fashion houses, while archival strips remind us that friendship and humour are never dated. 

September 6-December 7. B350-890 via here. RCB Galleria 1-2, River City Bangkok, 10am-8pm

In Bangkok, something strange is happening on the banks of the Chao Phraya – and it’s glowing blond. Iconsiam has become ground zero for Dragon Ball fever, hosting the largest exhibition the franchise has ever staged. A full-throttle homage to the Super Saiyan universe in all its loud, spiky, slow-motion glory. Iconic battle scenes have been pulled from the anime and built to scale, letting visitors wander through Namek like it's Sunday shopping. More than 40 life-sized figures lurk in corners and float mid-air, poised for battle or just waiting to be in your selfies. There's Kamehameha practice, a Dragon Ball scavenger hunt via app, even fusion zones. It’s half playground, half pilgrimage – and entirely designed for those who never quite left their Goku era behind. 

Until October 19. B400-1,110 via here. Attraction Hall, Iconsiam, 10.30am-8.30pm

Documentaries have long been treated as fact’s quieter sibling – earnest, restrained, occasionally worthy. What the Doc! wants none of that. Thailand’s first international documentary film festival arrives this year with a mission to undo expectation, inviting viewers into a genre that is anything but passive. The inaugural programme brings together 18 films – six from Thailand, 12 from abroad – chosen from over 1,500 submissions. Spanning both shorts and features, the selection offers a reframing of what documentary can be: experimental, intimate, unruly, occasionally surreal. This isn’t just about competition (though awards are on the line), but conversation – between makers, watchers, and the slippery truths we call reality. At WTD!, the documentary doesn’t just observe. It intervenes.

August 22-31. The full programme on the WTD! Website right here. Screening locations will be revealed soon.

There’s a curious magic in stepping back millions of years – a chance to wander a world before ours, where giant creatures roamed freely. This event offers just that: an immersive trek alongside Thai dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts, as if the clock has unwound to a forgotten era. Each step pulls you deeper into a landscape shaped by colossal terrestrial rulers, their shadows still lingering in the imagination. It’s less a simple exhibition and more a portal to ancient earth, where awe and curiosity collide. For anyone who’s ever been fascinated by the primeval, this is an invitation to experience wonder unfiltered – a rare glimpse of a world lost but never forgotten. July 1-November 2. B150-350 at the door. Museum Pier, 10am-6pm

Some melodies never quite leave the room. Long after the curtain falls, The Phantom of the Opera lingers – its music, its mystery, its chandelier hanging in the mind like a half-remembered dream. Since its premiere nearly four decades ago, the show has mesmerised over 160 million people across 47 countries, slipping between 21 languages without ever losing its voice. Bangkok first met the phantom in 2013. Now, in 2025, he returns. Tero Scenario brings the iconic production back to the Thai stage, inviting both loyal devotees and curious newcomers to step once more into the shadowy splendour of the Paris Opera House. Grand, gothic and unapologetically emotional, it remains a reminder of theatre’s ability to thrill, unsettle and completely possess.

August 5-31. B1,800-7,000 via here. Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre

There’s a certain kind of visual maximalism that doesn’t beg for attention so much as demand it – Hugo Brun’s work is exactly that. Loud in the best way, his pieces flirt with chaos: clashing colours, cartoonish proportions and the bold swagger of pop art unbothered by subtlety. His furniture sits somewhere between sculpture and set piece – chairs that feel like they might wink at you, tables that seem halfway to melting. It’s no surprise they’ve become backdrops for a thousand selfies, but there’s more to them than surface spectacle. Beneath the gloss and playful disorder lies a wink to nostalgia, a rebellion against beige interiors, and the refusal to be tasteful in a world that insists you should be. Burn isn’t decorating – he’s declaring.

Until October 18. Free. River City Bangkok, 10am-8pm

Language, for Htein Lin, is never just a tool – it’s terrain. In his upcoming solo exhibition at West Eden Gallery, Myanmar’s script becomes both surface and symbol, pressed with memory, shaped by defiance. The show places the artist’s longstanding political practice in quiet, unflinching conversation with national upheaval and personal history. Once a student activist and political prisoner, Htein Lin has spent decades turning lived experience into form – soap maps carved behind bars, skirts stitched with dissent, signage stripped of state control. Here, the Myanmar alphabet is reimagined not as calligraphy but as architecture: each character a vessel for identity, each curve a code of survival.

August 20-October 12. Free. West Eden Gallery, 1am-6pm

Helen Grace and Phaptawan Suwannakudt weave a conversation across five decades – a dialogue charting the shifting tides of gender roles in Australia, Thailand and Hong Kong. Their exhibition unfolds through a collage of personal memories and historical moments, layered with sound, image and objects that trace the displacements of time and place. Together, they build an expansive installation: sculpture, video projections and fragments of memory entwined like the lives they’ve lived. Wars endured, motherhood embraced – destruction and creation mirrored in their collaboration, felt as a kind of destiny. Their stories span worlds: Thailand, Australia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia – regions opening to each other, reshaping a global map. Amid this, a dream of borderless connection emerges, fragile and luminous, just before shadows creep in. The work breathes in folding screens and flickering video – mediums that hold space for their shared histories and hopes.

August 14-November 26. Free. 9/F, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 10am-8pm

In a world unsettled by pandemic aftershocks and tangled geopolitical currents, the old maps of power no longer hold. The centre has fragmented – replaced by a chorus of voices, each rooted in local soil, language and memory. What was once dismissed as peripheral now pulses with its own knowledge, its own beauty and fierce creative force. This project turns to those places – not for spectacle, but for something more intimate. It seeks out the forms of beauty that rise naturally from the everyday: myths whispered through generations, folktales carried on the wind, histories folded into daily rituals. These are aesthetics born not to dazzle global markets but to honour deep connections – to land, sky and the collective stories that bind us all.

Until October 10. Free. 7/F, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 10am-8pm

Beneath the polished veneer of history lies a terrain scarred by violence and silence. This exhibition excavates the emotional, political and spiritual debris left by authoritarian rule and broken ideologies – where dreams have rotted, power clings like rust and collective memory becomes a host for parasites. A striking collage stitches together pixelated portraits of Thailand’s military prime ministers, their blurred faces overlaid on a fragmented female form – a haunting symbol of sexuality erased and controlled under Cold War patriarchy. This decay seeps from past to present, a toxic residue of militarism embedded in the nation’s very flesh. There are no tidy resolutions here. Instead, the work unsettles, challenges and disrupts – a disillusioned landscape where history exhales through its own poisonous remains, inviting us to confront an unstable past and a future already lost.

Until September 20. Free. Gallery VER, midday-6pm

MIYABI’s solo exhibition feels less like a statement and more like a quiet return – to instinct, to breath, to the parts of the self we forget until something wild reminds us. Her work drifts between the external and the internal, sketching out a forest that exists both in the world and within the body. Birds are everywhere – perched in brushstrokes, embedded in clay, hovering just out of reach. They aren’t decorative. They’re messengers, mirrors, sometimes ghosts. The show unfolds in paintings, ceramics and mixed media that speak softly but persist, like the sound of wings in the distance. This isn’t environmentalism as warning siren. It’s slower, more intimate – a memory, a sensation, a spiritual echo. The earth fades, and with it, something internal dims too. MIYABI asks us to notice, and maybe, to return.

August 8-September 9. Free. Ground Bangkok, 7.30am-5pm 

Somewhere between silence and stillness, William Barrington-Binns has carved out a space that resists urgency. Each piece is a quiet act of devotion, the product of more than 60,000 hours spent in meticulous repetition, in what he describes as ‘art with breath.’ Rooted in the Japanese notion of Takumi – that deep, almost monastic pursuit of mastery – the work edges close to ritual. Photography and digital process are tools, yes, but they behave more like instruments in a windless orchestra, reverberating with something just beneath the surface. The result is deceptively simple. Still images that somehow seem to exhale, holding time like it’s a bird in the hand.

August 9-October 1. B120-300 at the door. 5/F, MOCA Bangkok, 10am-6pm

Before the roar, there’s a pause – a hush that falls over the jungle, the kind that signals you’re no longer at the top of the food chain. Jurassic World: The Experience drops you into that moment and doesn’t let go. In this latest, most ambitious version yet, Isla Nublar is reimagined across more than 10 sprawling zones. It’s not just a stroll through a film set – it’s an encounter. Life-sized dinosaurs emerge from the trees, scenes unfold with eerie familiarity and the line between fiction and reality blurs with every step. Presented by Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, the experience doesn’t ask for your suspension of disbelief. It demands it. The prehistoric past isn’t behind glass. It’s right there, breathing.

August 8 onwards. B579-989 via here. Asiatique The Riverfront, 11am-10pm