Art exhibitions in Chiang Mai this August

A new solo exhibition at Head High Second Floor follows Chiang Mai-based artist Wanlop Hansunthai's ongoing investigation into what happens when the sacred becomes a resource. Blood of the Gods, Tears of the Sun picks up where his 2024 show Survival Sphere left off, working across painting, mixed media, sculpture, photography and installation to trace the erosion of meaning in a world of environmental crisis and social destabilisation. The premise is unsparing: that humanity is both worshipper and destroyer and that what is being consumed is not merely the planet's materials but the spiritual frameworks that once made those materials matter. 

Curated by Jirarat Chaiyarach and Reinhard Kressner, the exhibition doesn't resolve into mourning – it holds the tension between reverence and depletion, leaving open the question of whether recognition comes before or after the point of no return.

Aug 22-Oct 2. Head High Second Floor. 28/1 Singharat Road. By appointment only. Closed Wednesdays and Sundays. Opening reception August 22, 6pm onwards

One of Chiang Mai's longest-running printmaking studios is back in its original neighbourhood. C.A.P Studio, founded in 2003 by Thai artist and master printer Kitikong Tilokawattanotai, has reopened at Nimmanhaemin Soi 17 following a major renovation, closing its temporary Old City location in the process. 

The expanded space has been purpose-built for printmaking collaboration, with the studio functioning as what it calls a living lab: visitors can watch the process from production through to finished edition, speak directly with artists and printers and browse or collect works made on site. The studio specialises in hand-pulled limited edition original prints, etching and woodblock among them, developed in close collaboration with Thai and international artists for over more than two decades.

C.A.P Studio. Nimmanhaemin Soi 17. Tuesday-Saturday 10.30am-6pm

Chiang Mai's annual late-night gallery crawl is back for 2026, with 16 spaces across the city staying open until 10pm across two evenings. Organised by the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Promotion and the Embassy of France in Thailand, the event spans galleries from Nimmanhaemin to Wat Gate, among them Gallery Seescape, La Luna, Alliance Française, Fah Lanna Museum and MAIIAM, which joins as a special Saturday-only afternoon route. Free songthaew shuttles run three circuits departing from the CMU Art and Culture Center on Nimmanhaemin Road, making it possible to cover all three routes across the two nights.

August 7-8. Galleries open until 10pm. Free songthaew from CMU Art and Culture Center, Nimmanhaemin Road. Full route map and registration at www.galleriesnights.com

Traces of Being takes as its starting point a simple proposition: that every work of art is proof that someone once stopped, paid attention and chose to mark their existence. Suteera Fankaew's solo exhibition, curated by Chaiwat Lochotinant, builds from there into something quieter and more personal, inviting viewers to slow down against the grain of a fast-moving world and sit with the passage of time and emotion. The show is hosted within Little Shelter Box, the art space inside Little Shelter Hotel, which also participates in Galleries Nights.

Aug 7-Oct 30. Little Shelter Box, 208/25 Lamphun Road. 10am-6pm. Opening reception August 7, 7pm

A Letter from Flowers brings together two Japan-based artists whose practices share an instinct for the things that sit just beyond reach. HANA works in layered colour and organic line, drawn to flowers, fish and insects as presences that carry the feeling of looking through glass at something beautiful and inaccessible. Kanae Shimoji works in traditional Nihonga materials, mineral pigments and Japanese paper, occasionally incorporating local soil and sand from places she has lived, building up landscapes that hold memory as much as image. Both artists have spent time in Thailand and that experience of observing a different culture from the outside runs through the work. The show doesn't force a single reading between the two practices, letting the parallels emerge on their own.

Aug 10-30. The Meeting Room Art Gallery. 10/1 Samlarn Road. 12pm-8pm. Opening reception August 10, 6pm

A new exhibition at MAIIAM draws entirely from the museum's own collection, bringing together more than 39 Thai and international artists across painting, sculpture, photography, moving image and installation. Some works are over fifty years old, others not shown publicly in decades, all reflecting co-founder Jean-Michel Beurdeley's personal collecting eye and the philosophy that shaped MAIIAM's permanent holdings. Black runs through the show not as a single fixed thing but as a shifting state: sometimes a fragment of an image, sometimes swallowing the whole frame, moving between density and weightlessness, structure and atmosphere. The curation leans on that instability, letting black carry belief, fear, desire or memory depending on the work and the viewer standing in front of it. Rather than building toward a singular reading, the exhibition holds multiple interpretations.

Until June 21, 2027. MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum. Ton Pao, San Kamphaeng. Wed-Mon 10am-6pm

French painter Myrtille Tibayrenc brings a new body of work to Alliance Française Chiang Mai with DAIMON, a solo exhibition exploring the human figure as a site of myth and transformation. Her paintings unfold in dreamlike landscapes populated by symbolic animals and solitary figures, drawing on Symbolist painting, mythology and Renaissance imagery without settling into portraiture or straightforward allegory. The technique matters as much as the subject: Tibayrenc preps traditional gesso grounds on wood panels and builds her images through layered oil glazes, a method she taught herself after studying art at a time when conceptual approaches had pushed traditional painting out of French art schools. Two decades living in Thailand show up in her use of gold leaf, putting European painting traditions in conversation with Thai sacred art.

July 11-August 16. Alliance Française Chiang Mai. 138 Charoen Prathet Road, Chang Khlan. Mon-Sat 9am-6pm. Opening reception July 11, 6pm