Arin Rungjang and David Teh Named Artistic Directors of 2025 Thailand Biennale

Thailand’s Ministry of Culture has announced artistArin Rungjangand criticDavid Tehas artistic directors of the FourthThailand Biennale, which will open on the island of Phuket in November 2025 and run through April 2026. The Bangkok-based Rungjang, a cofounder of the As Yet Unnamed collective, represented Thailand at the Fifty-Fifth Venice Biennale in 2013 and at Documenta 14. Teh, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, has held curatorial roles in Biennales in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

The curatorial team will additionally comprise Hera Chan, a curator in charge of Asia-Pacific art at London’s Tate Modern and a guest professor at the Korea National University of the Arts in Seoul; and curator and lecturer Marisa Phandharakrajade, who inaugurated the Galleries’ Nights Bangsaen in Chonburi, Thailand.

The theme for the Biennale will be “Eternal [Kalpa],” centered on a sustainable connection between humanity and nature amid the conditions currently challenging both. Among the topics explored will be technology, resource use, ecological degradation, and capitalist exploitation.

“The theme aims to communicate the relationship between humans, nature, and time, in the context of ecological degradation, threats from technology, wars, the dangers posed by agricultural and large-scale industrial practices, and the heavy exploitation of nature without consideration for the diversity of people coexisting,” said Rungjang, as quoted in ArtReview. “The problems stem from a human-centric view, where everything is seen as a tool for human service and meaning.”

A full list of participating artists has yet to be announced. The Thailand Biennale was inaugurated in 2018, with the first edition held in Krabi, the second in Korat, and the third in Chiang Rai and Chiang Saen.