WTF Gallery & Café, Bangkok, Thailand
Giving Voice and Space to the Critical

For more than 10 years now WTF Gallery & Café has been offering an independent art space in Bangkok for informal unconstrained encounters of people, everyday life, contemporary art and critical dialogue.

WTF Gallery & Café was founded in 2010 in the midst of political unrest and the Thai army’s shooting of protesters in Bangkok, followed by years of further upheaval within a series of short-lived governments until the military coup of 2014. From the beginning, the idea of WTF was to create an accessible social space where people, everyday life, contemporary art and critical dialogue could meet freely on a casual basis. For around more than 10 years, WTF has been a focal point for artists and activists of progressive thought and a platform for radical boundary shifts within the Thai cultural scene and Bangkok society.


 

Project-PRY 01 is a joint project by the three curators Soifa Saenkkhamkon, Somrak Sila and Penwadee Nophaket Manont, including the founders of WTF, with the aim of creating a new platform for the presentation of contemporary art. Together with the artists Adisak Phupa, Nuttapon Sawasdee and Jirawut Ueasungkomsate, an attempt was made to suspend the functions of the conventional gallery space and to bring about active social change through artistic dialogue.

The themes of responsibility – artistic and social – as well as resistance and how long-suppressed critical voices of cultural activists can be made audible again were artistically negotiated.

The video collage shows contributions from two exhibition projects in 2020 and 2021:
 


In Thai Men: Expectations on Manliness (2021), the two artists Baphoboy and Anuwat Apimukmongkon explore notions and realities of Thai masculinity and gender diversity. The works reflect on their experiences in one of the Thai military camps where conscripts are systematically dehumanised and any deviation from the gender norm is drastically punished. Thailand‘s Buddhist piety is confrontationally questioned in terms of its compatibility with gender diversity.

Both exhibitions supported by the International Relief Fund 2020 and 2021.