"One of their collaborators is Nova Contemporary, founded just five years ago by Sucharitakul. Her gallery finds its home in a thriving megalopolis of 11 million, with a flourishing contemporary scene: some 70 galleries participated in the most recent edition of Bangkok Galleries’ Night, and the country has seen several private museums, such as the Jim Thompson Art Center, spring up.
After interning at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sucharitakul traveled to hubs including Shanghai, Taiwan, and Tokyo, ‘to understand what Thailand needed’. For her first few years, she worked with international artists, both emerging and established – sometimes Chinese or Western artists, in order to lure in collectors familiar with better-known names – but now she has narrowed her program to mostly Southeast Asian artists. ‘There are so many talented artists in Thailand who are overlooked,’ she says. ‘There haven’t been enough international galleries to support production costs or help maintain their studios.’
Because Thailand was never colonized, Sucharitakul says, its collectors previously mainly focused on traditional crafts or easily digested Pop Art. She felt it her duty to begin to introduce artists from elsewhere in Asia, who are often subject to prejudice in Thailand, and to show more conceptual work. In this way, she set a high bar for cultivating a base of collectors – some of whom, she notes with pride, have bought their first editions or video artworks through her. ‘That is what makes me happiest,’ she says. By showing artists such as Cambodia’s Khvay Samnang, a veteran of Documenta, she was able to educate her collectors, some of whom had never heard of such shows, about the concept of international biennials.
The pandemic has offered her a silver lining for the local market, too. Some Bangkok-based buyers accustomed to doing cross-border business with Hauser & Wirth or Gagosian have, in lockdown, allowed Sucharitakul to introduce them to the virtues of more experimental works. And older, established Thai artists, she notes, ‘were kind enough to give me a chance by showing at my gallery.
‘When you’re working with different generations, they learn from each other. That’s how we can support the ecosystem.’ "