Our picks for the best things to do in Bangkok this weekend

Dr Mahmoud Safadi presents a solo exhibition that reads like pages from a lived diary. For him, painting goes beyond lines, forms and colour. Each canvas carries fragments of personal history alongside the wider story of the Palestinian people, holding endurance, memory, loss and a stubborn strain of hope in careful balance. You sense that every mark arrives with weight behind it. The opening takes place on Saturday February 28 at 6.30pm, with refreshments shared among guests and live music setting a reflective tone. Designer Dimas Angkling joins musician Issac Aesili for the evening, adding another layer of feeling to work that already speaks quietly yet firmly for itself.   February 28-March 14. Free. Bohemian Art Space, 10am-5pm

Takuya Mitani lingers on that uneasy line between sweetness and the stranger instincts we prefer to keep tucked away. The starting point is a painting titled Tiny tiny Icarusy icarusia, a sideways nod to the Greek myth of Icarus. Here, the boy does not plummet in disgrace. Instead, he slips back into a kind of infantile regression, retreating from adult expectation towards something softer. The wax wings melt, yet it reads less as punishment, more as surrender, a drifting off rather than a crash. Six further canvases expand the idea. Girls appear adorned with ram horns, crocodile tails, artificial wings, each accessory doubling as armour. Beneath the decorative calm sits a flicker of wildness. The myth feels present tense, still reshaping itself before our eyes.   Until March 22. Free. Joyman Gallery, 11am-6pm

Clear your diary and text the group chat because the glass you talk about all year waits patiently here. What once answered only to beer now drops the label and widens its scope. The festival shelves Thai craft brews alongside natural wines, sharp little cocktails and small-batch spirits poured by the people who actually make them. Each stallholder arrives with a backstory, which makes wandering from table to table feel oddly intimate. You sip, you chat, you learn why that citrus note matters. A mini-election runs throughout the weekend, inviting everyone to vote for favourites and crown crowd heroes. It’s a neighbourhood gathering with better lighting and far better drinks.   March 6-8. Free. ChangChui, 11am-11pm

This exhibition asks a gentle but stubborn question: what if the profound sits quietly on your kitchen table. It suggests discovery has less to do with novelty and more to do with attention, the kind that spots a mountain hidden behind a single strand of hair. What rests within reach often escapes notice. Awareness forms through living, watching, reflecting and sensing how time nudges everything along. The room feels hushed, yet movement carries on through deliberate brushstrokes and thin washes of layered pigment. Still-life motifs hold tension between permanence and erosion, solidity and fragility, like tongue against teeth. Each element leans on its opposite. The painterly language distils small daily fragments, revealing a world in steady transformation, including the restless terrain of the mind.   Until March 8. Free. KYLA Gallery, 3pm-midnight

Bangkok welcomes 2026 with a knowing wink as Muse Anime Festival sets up at JAM SPACE, a familiar meeting point for pop culture devotees. This is less trade fair, more shared obsession. Fourteen anime titles spread across 17 photo zones turn fandom into a walk-through experience, complete with oversized sets and scenes designed for lingering rather than rushing. Expect towering inflatables of Momo and Okarun from DAN DA DAN plus Rimuru, the eternally cheerful slime, looming large for cameras. Beyond the visuals, shelves fill with officially licensed pieces and harder-to-find imports, tempting even the disciplined collector. Food gets its own moment too, thanks to a themed cafe riffing on SPY x FAMILY and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.    January 10-March 29. Free. 4/F, MBK Centre, 11am-9pm

Six years on, Mango Art Festival still has its moment. From 4 to 8 March, it settles at River City Bangkok with the theme ‘ICON’, arguing that today’s overlooked objects become tomorrow’s fixations. In the Gallery Zone, Japan’s YOD TOKYO and Editions stands alongside Manila’s Gallery. Sort of. and Malaysia’s A4 ART GALLERY. The Independent Artist area pairs cult provocateur Joan Cornellà with regional names and emerging studios, while 95 fresh faces claim space in the Newcomer section. Craft appears with a sustainable rethink, TOR presents ‘Little Man’, and the main stage hosts candid creative conversations.    March 4-8. Free. River City Bangkok floors 1 and 2, 11am-8pm

Thai illustrator Lili Tae, also known as Phindita Techamongkhalaphiwat, presents a solo exhibition curated by Jason Yang that feels like stepping through shifting layers of memory, dream and landscape. Her digital paintings grow from quiet encounters with forests, wandering paths and unexpected meetings with flora and fauna, reshaped through a deeply personal lens. Soft brushwork meets luminous colour, allowing realism to brush against fantasy and moments of gentle surrealism without losing emotional clarity. Figures appear suspended between waking life and subconscious reflection, suggesting stories half remembered rather than fully explained. Natural textures echo skin, water, leaves and shifting weather, giving each image a tactile presence despite its digital form. Viewers wander through scenes that feel intimate yet expansive, reflecting how imagination reshapes daily observation without ever fully separating from lived experience.   Until March 16. Free. GalileOasis Gallery, 9am-8pm

STILL House stands quietly among the glass towers of Asoke, a restored heritage home that favours memory over gloss. Its latest chapter exhibition unfolds through a collaboration between NORSE Republics and &Tradition, a name long associated with Danish craft and considered modernism. Rooms shift from domestic familiarity to thoughtful installation. Chairs, lamps and objects sit not as showroom pieces but as prompts for touch and contemplation. Soft scent lingers, sound hums gently, small tastings appear during workshops that encourage slowing down. The exhibition frames design as lived experience rather than static display, offering a brief retreat from the city’s insistence on speed without losing sight of its context.   Until April 15. Free. STILL House, 10am-7pm

Pet expos often mean fluorescent halls and polite clapping for pedigree winners. This one rewrites the script. The weekend plays out as a full-tilt hangout where you browse smart feeders and wearable tech, stock up on treats, watch dogs strut and cats judge everyone silently, then wander over to adoption booths and donation drives before catching a live set without leaving the venue. Phase 1 of the line-up reads like a festival poster: Jaonaay–Jaokhun, Gavin, Twopee Southside, Safe Planet and Better Weather lead more than 30 acts. Between sets, celebrity pets such as Jum Meng and Moo Too make guest appearances. You come for the animals, stay for the music and leave wondering why every fair doesn’t feel this lively.   March 5-8. B20 at the door. Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal Station, 10am-9pm

An exhibition confronting Thai democracy arrives with unsettling clarity, pairing Manit Sriwanichpoom and Akkara Naktamna in a conversation that feels both personal and painfully public. Their works sketch daily existence beneath rigid political scripts where citizenship becomes an endurance test rather than an act of participation. Photographs and installations lean on sharp metaphors: veiled faces, constricted bodies, environments that appear breathable yet quietly hostile. Each piece questions authority’s gentle language while revealing how control slips through education, media, ritual. Viewers are left wondering what belief even means when vision feels filtered and breath negotiated. Are citizens misled, or simply surviving within limits imposed long before consent? The exhibition asks uncomfortable questions without promising answers, suggesting delusion may not belong to individuals alone but to a system sustained by repetition, fear and uneasy silence.   Until April 12. Free. West Eden Gallery, 11am-6pm