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

By this point in the year, most of us have spent far too much time staring at screens. Art in the PARQ offers a welcome excuse to step away for a while. Organised by The PARQ Life and Groundcontrol, the ten-day festival fills the mixed-use development with installations, live music, workshops and conversations centred on rest and emotional wellbeing. Artist collective Eyedropper Fill creates a landscape of shifting light and ambient sound, while works by Yibso Ariyaganta sit alongside a free rock-painting activity for anyone craving a quieter moment. After office hours, live painting from Blue Dean and laid-back sets by GYPSHA take over. Weekends add an art market, wellbeing talks, food stalls and activities for four-legged companions. Jun 12-21. Free entry. The PARQ Life. 11am-8pm

At Avani Ratchada Bangkok, The City Is Never One Color turns the hotel’s public spaces into a photographic portrait of the neighbourhood, tracing stories of community, individuality and belonging through the colours woven across daily life. Created with Dr. Prachaya Piemkaroon and first-year students from Srinakharinwirot University’s College of Social Communication Innovation, the exhibition gathers more than 40 images across three chapters: When Colors Coexist, Quiet Colors and Balance. Together, they frame familiar streets, fleeting moments and shared spaces from fresh angles, revealing a district shaped not by one perspective, but by many. June 8-30. Free entry. Avani Ratchada Bangkok. All day.

Bangkok Kunsthalle hands over its cavernous industrial halls to Spirits Melt to Flesh, a striking group exhibition bringing together eight Asian artists under the curatorial direction of Sam I-shan. Working across moving image, sound, sculpture and photography, the artists  respond directly to the building’s rough architecture and layered history. Light flickers across concrete, voices drift through shadowy corners and small encounters appear around every turn. Rather than relying only on what the eye can catch, the show asks visitors to listen, feel and move through the former warehouse as an experience, not just an exhibition. June 5-October 4. Free entry. Bangkok Kunsthalle. 2pm-8pm

Yaowarat welcomes the Bangkok debut of Filipino artist and sculptor Jinggoy Buensuceso with Cosmic Bloom, an immersive solo exhibition taking over Luenrit. Known as one of the Philippines’ leading contemporary sculptors, Buensuceso builds large-scale installations from industrial materials, shaping them through an origami-inspired visual language that explores motion, tension and constant change. Spread across multiple levels, Cosmic Bloom follows a journey of entry, expansion and release. Here, sculpture becomes an environment to move through rather than something viewed from a distance. The result is a striking exploration of perception, consciousness and our place within the wider universe. June 4-July 28. Free entry. Luenrit Yaowarat. 9am-5pm

Climate change usually arrives as statistics, policy papers and increasingly grim news alerts. The Changing Climate, Changing Lives (CCCL) Film Festival prefers a more human approach. Returning this June, the annual event hands the mic to filmmakers, artists and storytellers charting how environmental shifts shape everyday experiences, from eroding shorelines and harsher weather patterns to quieter transformations unfolding across neighbourhoods. The programme spans fiction, animation and experimental works from emerging voices around the world, many spotlighting stories that rarely reach wider audiences. Some films wrestle with loss and uncertainty, while others focus on resilience, collective action and the people finding inventive ways to adapt as the world changes around them. June 12-21. Free entry, though seats must be reserved in advance here. Lido Connect and The Jim Thompson Art Center.

An entire Akha house now stands in the middle of Bangkok, carefully dismantled from a village in northern Thailand and rebuilt piece by piece inside an art gallery. Roof panels, woven bedding, timber floors and weathered household objects all carry marks of the people who once lived among them, quietly tracing a way of life that grows more fragile with each passing generation. The Akha are an Indigenous ethnic group whose communities are spread across the mountains of northern Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and southern China, known for their intricate textiles, spiritual rituals and deep connection to land and ancestry. In recent decades, migration, tourism and rapid development have reshaped many of those traditions. Through memory, craftsmanship and personal histories, The Preservation of Fire by Busui Ajaw keeps those stories alive a little longer. May 15-November 1. Free entry. Bangkok Kunsthalle. 2pm-8pm

Bangkok Kunsthalle welcomes Brooklyn-based Thai collective Elekhlekha as its latest artists-in-residence, turning the space into a constantly shifting laboratory for sound, storytelling and live visual experimentation. Running across two months, the residency unfolds through research sessions, performances and collaborative installations. One standout arrives with Lomwong, an open-studio collaboration featuring Thai musicians and artists working inside immersive surround sound, moving floor projections and a Yamaha Disklavier piano sitting directly at the centre of the room. May 23, 31, June 13 and 20. Free. Bangkok Kunsthalle. 1pm-4pm

Bangkok’s humble flower garland takes on a new form in Stillness in Bloom, a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Yu Chuan Chang. Drawing on a sight found all over the city, Chang creates contemporary paintings that move between Eastern and Western artistic traditions while reflecting on beauty’s short life. His blooms stay forever at their peak, suspended in paint long after their real-life counterparts fade. Presented as a Garland of Eternity dedicated to Bangkok, the works weave together time, memory and emotion. Layer upon layer of pigment works almost like needle and thread, binding petals to canvas with quiet precision. If a garland’s meaning comes from accepting impermanence, Chang’s paintings offer a softer counterpoint: preserving one perfect moment and letting it linger. May 23-July 12. Free entry. Maison JE Bangkok. 11am-7pm

Fresh from its 19th edition earlier this year, the cult-favourite market returns for round 20 with a new indoor home at Pat Arena, the stomping ground of Port Futsal Club in Khlong Toei. Air-conditioning, tighter walkways and a more compact setup slightly change the energy, though regulars still come for the same reason: over 250 vendors selling vintage fashion, vinyl, handmade goods, books and wonderfully unnecessary things you absolutely do not need but somehow buy anyway.  Food stalls keep everyone fed, DJs soundtrack the day and stylish regulars roam the venue with equally stylish dogs trotting beside them. June 19-21. B160 at the door. Pat Arena. 1pm-11pm

Not all monsters lurk under the bed. Some stay tucked away in old memories, long after the moment has passed. Museum of Monsters explores the parts of ourselves we would rather keep hidden, using bones as traces of past mistakes, heartbreaks and difficult experiences that never quite disappear. Presented as fragments of personal evidence, the works examine how buried memories shape who we become. Less a haunted house than quiet self-reflection, the show asks visitors to confront their imperfections and make peace with the creatures they carry around. May 8-June 21. Free entry. RCB Galleria 5, River City Bangkok. 10am-8pm