Bangkok Art Biennale 2026 is set to run from Oct 29 to Feb 28 under the theme "Angels & Mara" across temples, museums, cultural institutions and public spaces alongside a wider city programme of independent exhibitions.
For its fifth edition, Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB) features 72 participating artists and collectives who brings together practices spanning painting, sculpture, photography, moving image, textile, installation and performance, exploring the forces that pull contemporary life between desire and restraint, destruction and renewal, the sacred and the everyday.
One of the highlights includes Memento Mori at Wat Pho by Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura. The reclining bronze figure connects mortality, rebirth and Buddhist iconography while recalling both European funerary sculpture and the temple's monumental Reclining Buddha.
Nearby, Ikemura's Wu-san and Ma-san -- the "Angel from Cologne" and the "Devil from Cologne" -- embody opposing forces that ultimately belong to the same world.
At the National Museum Bangkok, Chinese artist Liu Jianhua creates Square (Siamese Triangle), a site-specific configuration of steel and glazed porcelain in the Throne Hall. Its molten-gold-like porcelain fragments reflect the hall's vermilion ceiling and evoke centuries of ceramic exchange between China and Siam, including the histories of benjarong and lai nam thong.
Usagi Kannon II by Leiko Ikemura. Jonty Wilde
In her performance work WOMARA, Chomphunut Phuttha confronts the gendered histories of tattooing by transforming text inscriptions into an assertion of bodily agency.
Vietnamese artist Le Hien Minh moves through another kind of image-world. Lotusthetics rapidly collages hundreds of images from cinema, news, archives, celebrity culture and spiritual iconography, destabilising their original meanings while confronting representations of Asian women shaped by Orientalism, colonialism and ornamental stereotypes.
The Biennale's 11 venues are Alliance Française Bangkok, Wat Arun, Wat Pho, Wat Prayoon, National Museum Bangkok, Art Centre Silpakorn University, Museum Siam, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, One Bangkok, CentralWorld and Siam Paragon.
For 2026, "Angels & Mara" extends beyond BAB's official venues through BAB Plus and BAB Fringe, two collaboration programmes connecting the Biennale with the wider contemporary art ecosystem beyond Bangkok.
Blessed Lady Of The Nails by Le Hien Minh. Photos Courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale 2026
BAB Plus brings together One Bangkok Art & Culture Space, 100 Tonson Foundation, Bangkok Citycity Gallery, DIB 26 and the Jim Thompson Art Center, each developing its own exhibition.
BAB Fringe expands the constellation further through collaborations with Rongsi 1984+1 Gallery, Helu-Trans and Warin Lab Nomad, creating another layer of independently produced exhibitions.
For more information, visit facebook.com/bkkartbiennale and instagram.com/bkkartbiennale.