Bangkok Kunsthalle

Once a printing house, now a memory pressed between tiled floors and wooden stools – this exhibition remembers Thai Wattana Panich not just as a building, but as a beating heart of knowledge production. Tucked in the centre of Bangkok, it served as a quiet engine of authority, where language wasn’t simply used but standardised. Today, the show asks what happens when the direction shifts – when words don’t trickle down from textbooks, but bubble up from tweets, slang and subtitled memes. It’s not just about nostalgia; it’s about power, who holds it, and who gets to redefine it. In one room, a narrow reading space mirrors cramped living quarters. Visitors must squat to read. It’s a subtle nod to who language once excluded, and who now rewrites the rules from the bottom up. There are games, too. Of course. Until Aug 17. Free. Bangkok Kunsthalle, 2pm-8pm  

There are artists who write, and then there’s Tang Chang – Bangkok-born, Sino-Thai, who dissolved the boundary altogether. For Chang, language wasn’t a tool so much as a presence, flickering somewhere between gesture and breath. At Calligraphic Abstraction, now at Bangkok Kunsthalle, his paintings refuse to be pinned down. Made between 1971 and 1972 – two blisteringly productive years – the works occupy a space where script becomes spirit, and symbols resist being named. Characters hover on the brink of recognition, echoing Chinese forms but never settling into clarity. Others mimic the cadence of poetry, stripped of words but still pulsing with rhythm. There’s a sort of devotion in it – though not to meaning. The line itself becomes the prayer, trembling between what can be read and what can only be felt. Until July 13. Free. Bangkok Kunsthalle, 6pm-8pm