Kamonlak

Sukchai

Kamonlak Sukchai (1994) is a self-taught photographer, graduated in a major of Production Design in Cinema. When her father presented her with a camera he used as a teenager, she exchanged screenplay writing for photography as her main field of interest.

Kamonlak's practice often involves collage technique and her work explores Southeast Asian folklores and their influences on history, national identity, religious belief and sexual mythology.

Her series Red Lotus was part of Foam Talent 2020 and also shown in a solo exhibition at Katmandu Photo Gallery in Bangkok. Other works of Sukchai featured in several group exhibitions and festivals in Bangkok and Taipei.

Foam Talent 2020 at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam: Red Lotus by Kamonlak Sukchai © Foam
Foam Talent 2020 at Kühlhaus Berlin: Red Lotus by Kamonlak Sukchai © Foam. Photo: Nina Hansch

Red Lotus by Kamonlak Sukchai

The series Red Lotus concerns different scenes from a Buddhist myth with the same title, about a female deity who loses her purity due to her promiscuity and passion. After being sacrificed to the gods, she is reincarnated as a red lotus. In this series, montage is used as a technique to imitate the collage-like character of folk tales.

Reconsidering the references to her own name, Kamonlak, which is Thai for ‘lotus’ , with this retelling of the age-old tale, Sukchai explores how myths can be retold in order to oppose the ideologies they have been made to serve.

Foam Talent 2020 at Kühlhaus Berlin: Red Lotus by Kamonlak Sukchai © Foam. Photo: Nina Hansch

exhibitions

read more in Foam Magazine #55: Talent

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© Kamonlak Sukchai
The rebirth of Red Lotus from the series Red Lotus C Kamonlak Sukchai

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Kamonlak Sukchai