Art exhibitions in Chiang Mai this October

The 14th Self-Enquiry Project, presented in collaboration with ATTA Gallery, brings together works from different periods of Kamin Lertchaiprasert’s practice alongside pieces by artists and thinkers who have influenced his understanding of art, life and spiritual awareness. The exhibition grew from encounters that left a lasting impression, including Rirkrit Tiravanija’s relational approach to art and his friendship with philosopher and writer Pramuan Pengchan. Works include the papier-mâché Buddha sculpture Lord Buddha said, ‘If you see Dhamma, you see me’, made from decommissioned Thai banknotes, Samsara (Birth, Aging, Sickness, Death), Living Kindness and The Nature of Emptiness, alongside newer video and photographic works. Guest artists include Rirkrit Tiravanija, Angkrit Ajchariyasophon, Teerasak Panyakaew and Weerakit Achareewongpaisan. The exhibition considers the relationship between inner and outer worlds, value, everyday life and artistic creation, with the opening presented as a round-table conversation featuring Lertchaiprasert, Tiravanija, Pengchan and writer Pinyo Trisuriyathamma.

October 3-December 19. 31st Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit (office). Soi Wat-Umong, Suthep Road. Opening reception and talk October 3, 2-6pm. Saturday-Tuesday 1pm-5pm

Two contrasting viewpoints come together in How Are You?, an art exhibition by Andreas Hoffmann and Krynkana Kongpetch at La Luna Gallery. Using the shifting visual effects of lenticular imagery, the exhibition plays with perspective, perception and the ways a single world can be understood through different eyes. The exhibition places the two artists in contrasting imagined environments, suggesting a dialogue between different ways of seeing, thinking and interpreting the world. The exhibition opens with a collaborative performance featuring Hoffmann, Kongpetch, Franklin Lau, MissBubblebliss, Nattha Thammathi and Orawee Bumpetch. How Are You? runs alongside Supapong Laodheerasiri’s Dialogue in Objects, giving La Luna two very different approaches to perception and contemporary art across its exhibition space.

October 2-31. La Luna Gallery. Charoenrat Road, Wat Ket. Opening reception and performance October 2, 7pm. Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm

Lacquer is a heritage craft with deep roots in Thailand, while Kamalor, the traditional technique of painting in coloured lacquer, is comparatively rare in the Lanna tradition. Klai. Rak. Kamalor explores how the technique can be sustained and developed for a new generation through research into alternative materials. A research team from Chulalongkorn University, led by Asst. Prof. Dr. Somchai Boonyanun and Lecturer Sanan Rattana, has developed materials designed to recreate the depth, gloss and layered colour of traditional Kamalor without relying on increasingly scarce and costly natural lacquer sap.

At Art Connecting Lacquer Museum, Kamalor paintings by Sanan Rattana are displayed alongside traditional natural-lacquer works and pieces made using the alternative materials, with research displays and a hands-on table allowing visitors to examine the surfaces, including under UV light. Later in the exhibition, students from Chiang Mai Rajabhat University will add their own alternative-material lacquer paintings to the upper-floor display. At the heart of the exhibition is a question about where the value of traditional art lies: in its materials, or in the knowledge, skill and intent behind its making.

October 1-December 30. Art Connecting Lacquer Museum. Charoenrat Road, Wat Ket. Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm

Weave Artisan Society presents Days in Wonder, their second exhibition by Danish artist Lars Bo A., an invitation to look at everyday life through imagination and to embrace the gap between what we expect and what actually unfolds. The exhibition centres on the idea that amid our constant tendency to plan for the future, the only moment we can truly experience is the present. When reality turns out differently from what we anticipate, that’s where the wonders begin.

Born in 1959 and raised in Denmark, Lars is an author, visual artist and composer, with several published books to his name. He is particularly interested in observing the world around him and finding creative possibilities in unexpected places. The exhibition also draws on his work as a writer, with a reading from his latest children’s book, Days in Wonder, forming part of the opening programme alongside a special performances by the artist. The opening will also introduce an immersive experience combining visual art, light and sound, curated with Neurovizr. 

October 10-31. Weave Artisan Society. Soi 3 Wua Lai Road, Haiya. Opening reception October 10, 5pm. 9am-5:30pm

From intricate Meiji-era crafts to contemporary capsule-toy figures and food models, The Superlative Artistry of Japan traces the extraordinary technical skill and inventive thinking behind Japanese craftsmanship. The touring exhibition, organised by The Japan Foundation, Bangkok in collaboration with the Creative Economy Agency and curated by Professor Yuji Yamashita, brings together more than 30 selected works spanning traditional kogei and contemporary creations. Highlights include a large Satsuma vase decorated with flowers and gold leaf, an embroidered hanging depicting the gates of Nikko Shrine and a shell-shaped incense container demonstrating the maki-e lacquer technique. Contemporary pieces show how the same attention to detail continues in unexpected forms, from hyper-realistic food replicas to tiny animal figures by Kaiyodo. The exhibition considers how Japanese craftsmanship developed during the Meiji period, when traditional techniques were combined with Western influences, and how those skills continue to find new expressions today.

October 10-November 15. TCDC Chiang Mai. Muang Samut Road, Chang Moi. 10:30am-7pm. Closed Mondays

Traditional musical instruments, textiles, photographs and recorded music come together in Melodies and Motifs in the Mountains, a multimedia exhibition by Cultural Crossroads Asia and Victoria Vorreiter. The exhibition marks the official launch of Cultural Crossroads Asia on the world stage, bringing together material that explores the musical and textile traditions of northern Thailand and the wider Golden Triangle. Through photographs, textiles, instruments and sound, the exhibition looks at the ways music, craft, storytelling and cultural knowledge are passed between generations, creating an immersive portrait of traditions that remain part of everyday life.

Vorreiter’s long-running work documenting the region’s musical heritage provides the foundation for the exhibition, bringing together visual and recorded material that gives audiences a closer look at the people, instruments and traditions behind northern Thailand’s diverse musical cultures. The exhibition opens alongside Tales My Ancestors Taught Me, an afternoon of age-old Akha songs and stories offering an opportunity to experience some of the musical traditions represented in the exhibition with the multimedia display continuing through the new year.

October 3-January 10, 2027. Chiang Mai City Craft Space. Thapae Road. Opening reception and performance October 3, 4pm-5pm

Fire Spirits is the second solo exhibition from Chiang Mai-based sculptor Worasit Kileksi, whose practice draws on Buddhist and folk imagery to assemble figures from discarded and rather humble materials – wood, clay, metal and found objects – into primitive gods and mystical animals. In this new body of work the underlying humour of his earlier pieces remains but the atmosphere has shifted toward something more austere. Burnt wood, rusted metal and copper wire form effigies that feel as though they have emerged from a ravaged landscape, neither human nor machine. Alongside them, small terracotta portraits blackened by smoke evoke elderly men and women from northern Thai rural communities, their naïve and expressive faces sharing an uncanny family resemblance. Fire runs quietly through all of it as a thread connecting passage, impermanence and the slow recession of customs and memories with the generations that carried them. Curated by Myrtille Tibayrenc of Toot Yung Art Studio.

Now-October 4. Alliance Française Chiang Mai. Charoen Prathet Road.

A Moving Ceremony: The Art of Becoming follows artist Jay Cheng across two connected bodies of work. The first, The Unseen Made Visible, draws on her experience as a medium, exploring communication, the continuation of consciousness beyond physical death and realities that exist beyond what can be immediately seen. The second looks back at her earlier life as a milliner, returning to the hat blocks, materials and inherited objects that accompanied her practice for years – finding in them, now, a dimension of meaning she hadn't previously recognised. Objects carry histories. Materials hold traces. What once appeared simply as tools for making hats has become, through the lens of her current practice, something else entirely. The exhibition explores these two chapters together, treating Cheng's past and present as parts of the same ongoing journey. Works are presented as fragments and traces of a process still in motion.

The venue, Studio 88, is located inside Sak Homestay in Doi Saket, outside the city centre. A shared shuttle service is available from Central Festival – book by September 8. Pick-up at 12.30pm, drop-off at 4.30pm. B200 per person, depending on numbers.

September 12-October 12. Studio 88 at Sak Homestay, Doi Saket. Opening reception September 12, 2pm-4pm. Dress code: black and white, hats encouraged.

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

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