Near Bangkok, a Sprawling Forest Where Art Seems to Grow on Trees

New York Times

13-04-2025

Three times a day, a delicate fog drifts from nozzles hidden in flower beds and rolls down sloping hills and into a large clearing in the Khao Yai Art Forest.
The white mist unfurls across the landscape like a wave, skimming the grass and enveloping the forest-edged valley, before fading into a thin layer of moisture.
Fog is rare in this rural part of central Thailand, bordering Khao Yai National Park. But this work, 'Khao Yai Fog Forest, Fog Landscape #48435' (2024) — created by the Japanese artist, Fujiko Nakaya — transcends nature itself.
To create the fog and choreograph its presence across the 10,000-square-foot site, Ms. Nakaya altered the landscape and collaborated with Aquaria, a San Francisco company whose technology harvests atmospheric moisture for clean, drinkable water.
'In Buddhist philosophy, water descends from the sky to heal and connect us with nature,' said Marisa Chearavanont, a Korean-born art patron and philanthropist who lives in Bangkok, in an interview at the Khao Yai Art Forest at dusk, as the forest fog surrounded us.
'This mist is like a spiritual cleansing experience.'
In 2022, driven by a personal search for healing in nature after Thailand's Covid lockdown, Ms. Chearavanont, who is in her early 60s, bought the site, some 160 acres of flatlands and forested hills in Khao Yai, a weekend retreat for Bangkok residents about 100 miles northeast of the city.
Once the essential infrastructure was built, the Khao Yai Art Forest opened in February 2025, with artworks integrated in the natural landscape for visitors to explore freely during opening hours (admission is 500 Thai baht, or $14.64).
'We invite artists to create site-specific works using materials they find locally, like water, wood, stones, soil and wind,' Ms. Chearavanont said.
Amid the trees, a towering stone sculpture titled 'God' (2024) by the Italian artist Francesco Arena features two boulders sourced locally and stacked vertically.
Fragments of 10 stupas titled 'Pilgrimage to Eternity' (2024) by the Thai artist who goes by the pseudonym Ubatsat, made from local soil and covered in some moss, are gradually being re-appropriated by nature.
The Berlin duo Elmgreen & Dragset have created a working cocktail lounge titled 'K-Bar' (2024) dedicated to the hard-drinking German artist Martin Kippenberger, who died in 1997. Once a month at dusk, the small, well-lighted building — with bar stools and a collection of bottles — comes to life, and a bartender serves drinks to visitors.
Standing watch in a rice field is a bronze version of the French artist Louise Bourgeois's 30-foot-high spider sculpture called 'Maman' (1999–2002), on loan from the Easton Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving Bourgeois's legacy.
The rice field is part of the Art Forest's organic farming program, which aims to promote healing through food in partnership with the Chef Cares Foundation, which Ms. Chearavanont founded in the early days of the Covid pandemic. Initially focused on feeding frontline workers, the foundation now works to assist underprivileged communities, in part by providing culinary training to children in need.
The emphasis on site-specific art, regenerative farming and Buddhist principles sets the Khao Yai Art Forest apart from other major outdoor art initiatives —such as Inhotim museum in Brumadinho, Brazil, set within a 140-hectare botanical garden; Château La Coste, in the Provence region of France; and Naoshima island in Japan.
'In our modern, virtual world, we need to touch the land and restore our connection with nature,' said Ms. Chearavanont, who is married to Soopakij Chearavanont, chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group, an agro-industrial conglomerate in Thailand. 'The idea behind the Art Forest was to bring communities together around art, help them reconnect with the land, feed them and restore the environment.'
On a hilltop, 'Madrid Circle' (1986) by the British Land Art pioneer Richard Long features stones arranged in a circle, referencing his practice of walking as art. The work was part of a large batch that Ms. Chearavanont acquired from the estate of the Italian collector Giuseppe Panza in a sale facilitated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera, then a director at the gallery Hauser & Wirth.
In 2022, Mr. Rabolli Pansera, an architect and curator, who has curated several national pavilions at the Venice Biennale, moved from St. Moritz, Switzerland, to Bangkok to steer Ms. Chearavanont's art programming as director.
On advice of Mr. Rabolli Pansera, Ms. Chearavanont bought the Bangkok Kunsthalle in 2023, as an urban counterpart to the Art Forest. Located in the city's Chinatown, the nearly 65,000-square-foot Brutalist complex, which had been a fire-damaged printing house, comprises three connected buildings.
As in the Art Forest where artists work with local materials, in the Kunsthalle, artists are invited to respond to the building's decayed state through art, film, music and architecture.
'We don't plan to restore the building,' Mr. Rabolli Pansera said in an interview at the Kunsthalle, where soot and traces of smoke were still visible on the walls. 'We invite artists to make interventions in the architecture itself. They can drill all the holes they want. Like the forest, the building is not a passive backdrop. It shapes the art and is part of the experience. This is land art 2.0.'
Opened as an arts venue in 2024, the Kunsthalle regularly hosts exhibitions by local and international artists. In June, the Thai collective Yunglai will present a show reflecting on the building's history as a printing house. From Sept. 1 to Feb. 15, the show 'Description Without Place' will feature six inhabitation cells or 'Cellules d'Habitation,' tiny living pods created by the French Israeli artist Meir Eshel, who was known professionally as Absalon.
'We want our project to be attractive to artists and to show that we can produce new content and create new opportunities here,' Mr. Rabolli Pansera said. 'We also want to work with other global art institutions.'
Next March, out at the Khao Yai Art Forest, the Colombian artist Delcy Morelos will unveil a site-specific installation near an excavated rock garden, following an introduction facilitated by the Dia Art Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit organization that initiates, supports and preserves art projects.
'We visited the Art Forest with Delcy after her show in New York, and she has now proposed an incredible project for the site,' said Jessica Morgan, director of the Dia Art Foundation in a phone interview from New York.
'We are also discussing showing works from our collection at the Bangkok Kunsthalle, our first exhibition in Thailand,' Ms. Morgan said. 'I plan to return with my curatorial team. Supporting artists together is key.'
That collaboration represents a small part of a larger cultural transformation in Thailand, fueled by collectors and private investment.
Dib Bangkok, the country's first major museum for international contemporary art, founded by the Thai businessman Purat Osathanugrah and housed in a warehouse transformed according to the Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast's vision, is set to open in December.
The Bangkok Art Biennale was first held in 2018, and it has since established itself on Southeast Asia's contemporary art calendar. The Access Bangkok Art Fair debuted last December.
Ms. Chearavanont has already reshaped Thailand's cultural landscape. Her ambition is to position the country as a destination for contemporary art by attracting visitors and encouraging international artists to engage with its culture and environment.
'I am no longer collecting art, I am sharing art,' Ms. Chearavanont said. 'My vision is to put Thailand on the geopolitical map of the art world.'