Khao Yai Art Forest and Bangkok Kunsthalle: How Contemporary Art Can Heal Urban and Natural Landscapes

Two visionary contemporary art institutions in Thailand at the forefront of Southeast Asia’s cultural transformation

Marisa Chearavanont and Stefano Rabolli Pansera. Photo: Samatcha Apaisuwan and Andrea Rossetti

Khao Yai Art is a philanthropic organization founded by patron Marisa Chearavanont and led by Stefano Rabolli Pansera, former director at Hauser & Wirth. Together, they are behind two of the most ambitious art initiatives in Southeast Asia: Bangkok Kunsthalle and the Khao Yai Art Forest.

Bangkok Kunsthalle opened just a year ago inside a brutalist former printing house, gutted by fire in 2001 and left abandoned ever since. Despite its recent debut, the Kunsthalle has already emerged as a key player in Bangkok’s contemporary art scene, thanks to a bold and experimental program. The institution hosts four exhibitions per year, each designed to spark a dialogue between invited artists and the architectural space, gradually restoring parts of the building that had long been off-limits to the public.

Bangkok Kunsthalle. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

But the Kunsthalle’s mission of regeneration goes beyond architecture, as the ongoing exhibition Calligraphic Abstraction featuring works by the Sino-Thai artist Tang Chang shows. In collaboration with Restaurateurs Sans Frontières, one of his masterpieces is undergoing live restoration throughout the duration of the show. Here, conservation becomes not just an artistic performance, but also a public declaration of the Kunsthalle’s healing purpose.

Restaurateurs Sans Frontières working on Tang Chang's masterpiece. Photo: Stefano Rabolli Pansera

Born from the same vision is the Khao Yai Art Forest, which officially opened this February—and may represent an even more ambitious endeavor. Chearavanont has set out to rewild a vast area roughly 150 kilometers from Bangkok, previously depleted by monoculture farming, transforming it into an open-air museum where art becomes part of an ecological restoration process.

Fujiko Nakaya, Khao Yai Fog Forest - Fog Landscape #48435. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Although these large-scale works might initially seem foreign to their wild surroundings, they instead act as catalysts, deepening and magnifying the natural landscape’s regenerative process. Some pieces work by blending seamlessly with the environment: the spiritual, almost Buddhist land intervention by Richard Long, or Fujiko Nakaya’s fog sculpture, which heightens the sensory experience of nature. Others, like K-BAR by Elmgreen & Dragset—a pavilion featuring a small bar and a Martin Kippenberger painting—embrace contrast to highlight the tension between human presence and untamed wilderness, raising questions about the role of art within the historical framework of colonialism in Southeast Asia.

Richard Long, Madrid Circle. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Elmgren & Dragset, K-BAR. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Louise Bourgeois, Maman. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

With the opening of the Khao Yai Art Forest, Marisa Chearavanont’s vision takes a significant leap forward. It places even greater emphasis on the role contemporary art must play in a region marked by rapid economic growth and, as a result, increasing tension between humans and nature. Art, in this vision, becomes not only a space for reflection and debate, but more pragmatically, a healing force in and of itself.

For more info about Khao Yai Art and other Bangkok art institutions, check our Exhibitions section.