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.
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.
exhibitions
read more in Foam Magazine #55: Talent