Artist Biography
Navin Rawanchaikul (b. 1971, Chiang Mai, Thailand, based in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Fukuoka, Japan) is known for collaborative projects that bring art into unconventional, everyday settings. Engaging both real and imagined communities, his practice employs media across sculpture, painting, performance, photography and film to explore modern systems of production and the shifting nature of identity in a globalised world.
Growing up as a Hindu-Punjabi minority in Chiang Mai, Rawanchaikul was exposed to cross-cultural exchanges and a personal experience of otherness from an early age. This later fuelled his desire to drive connections between people through art. In Navin Gallery Bangkok (1995–1998), he converted a Bangkok taxicab into a mobile gallery, presenting rotating exhibitions that introduced art to unsuspecting passengers. In his large-scale paintings modelled after striking Bollywood billboard posters, Rawanchaikul depicts elaborate narratives that merge social history, autobiography and fantasy. Often casting himself as the lead, these works chart epic adventures of self-discovery—a journey that speaks to the diverse cultures and migratory histories in Southeast Asia.
Rawanchaikul obtained his BFA from Chiang Mai University in 1993. His work is found in major collections including Asia Society, New York; Fonds régional d'art contemporain, Marseille; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; Inhotim Museum, Brumadinho; MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery Singapore; Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Singapore Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; and Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
Notable exhibitions include Ciao da Roma (2021), MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome; SUNSHOWER (2019), Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts; (Re)Collect (2018), National Gallery Singapore; Problem-Wisdom (2017), Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; SUNSHOWER (2017), National Art Center, Tokyo & Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Mon Art du Style (2017), MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including the 3rd Setouchi Triennale (2016), Kagawa; APT8 (2016), 8th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; 6th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (2016), Niigata; Open House (2011), 3rd Singapore Biennale; Arts and Cities (2010), 1st Aichi Triennale, Nagoya; Live and Let Live (2009), 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale; Reflective Asia (2008), 3rd Nanjing Triennale; Art Circus (2005), 2nd Yokohama Triennale; International 04 (2004), 3rd Liverpool Biennial; Urban Creation (2002), 4th Shanghai Biennale; Culture Meets Culture (2002), 3rd Busan Biennale; 2nd Berlin Biennale (2001); The Sky is the Limit (2000), 2nd Taipei Biennial; Partage d'Exotismes (2000), 5th Lyon Biennale; and Unmapping the Earth (1997), 2nd Gwangju Biennale. Rawanchaikul represented Thailand at llumiNATIONS (2011), 54th Venice Biennale.
Rawanchaikul had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2006, resulting in Asia Society Portfolio (2006)—a set of ten prints by leading Asian artists to mark both a decade of the Asian Society’s exhibition and artist commission programme, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Society’s founding.