Join us at esea contemporary for 'Thailand and the Making of Modernity,' a screening and conversation event presented in dialogue with Nakrob Moonmanas's exhibition 'รูปสุวรรณศิวิไลซ์: Metamorphosis in Gold,' curated by Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, at Warin Lab Contemporary, Bangkok.
The event will begin with a 20-minute screening of the first three acts of 'รูปสุวรรณศิวิไลซ์: Metamorphosis in Gold', a trilogy of short films forming part of the wider multi-disciplinary exhibition. This will be followed by a conversation between the artist Nakrob Moonmanas and the exhibition's curator Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, moderated by esea contemporary Associate Curator Julia Jiang. Together, the speakers will explore the questions at the heart of ‘Metamorphosis in Gold’: how histories are constructed, how identities are transformed, and what remains unresolved within projects of ‘civilisation’.
Moving between archival research, curatorial inquiry, and speculative artistic practice, the conversation takes as its starting point the figure of Kanang – a Maniq child brought to the court of Rama V within the broader project of ‘ศิวิไลซ์’ (civilisation). Through this lens, the speakers will reflect on what it means to see across difference, navigate diasporic perspectives, interrogate the limits of the historical record, and consider how art can reopen histories that resist closure.
Expanding on the exhibition’s exploration of performance, transformation, and historical memory, 'Thailand and the Making of Modernity' invites audiences into a collective reflection on recognition and representation, as well as the unfinished legacies of modernity.
Advance booking is required for this event.
'รูปสุวรรณศิวิไลซ์: Metamorphosis in Gold' continues at Warin Lab Contemporary, Bangkok, until 10 July 2026.
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn is the Associate Professor of Art and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Informed by ethnographic and curatorial inquiry, his research explores prefiguration, diasporic identities, and utopia. He is the author of Pathways to Utopia (Indiana University Press, 2025) and Taking Form, Making Worlds (University of Texas Press, 2022), and editor of Unmaking to Make (UCL Press, 2026). An anthropologist, curator, and art theorist, his exhibitions include Construction, Occupation (Fowler Museum, 2025), Cartoneras: Re-leituras Latino-Americanas (Casa do Povo, 2019), and Concrete Mirror (EHESS, Paris, 2017). For his work at São Paulo's Cambridge Artistic Residency, he received Brazil's prestigious APCA Trophy for curatorial practice.
Nakrob Moonmanas is a visual artist based in Bangkok whose collage practice explores the historical memories of Thai visual arts and culture. Drawing from pictorial archives across different times and geographies, his work juxtaposes local and foreign fragments of visual culture to construct alternative narratives that reframe familiar histories through a contemporary aesthetic. He studied Thai literature at Chulalongkorn University.
His work has been presented at institutions including Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre, Jim Thompson Art Center, Mizuma Gallery, and Warin Lab Contemporary. From 2020–21, Moonmanas was a laureate of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, supported by the Institut français and the Embassy of France in Bangkok. In 2022, he participated in the Bangkok Art Biennale, and in 2024 collaborated with Chitti Kasemkitvatana on Our Place In Their World for The Spirits of Maritime Crossing, a collateral event of the Venice Biennale.