Pannaphan Yodmanee
Pannaphan Yodmanee – Aftermath – is a large-scale, mixed-media installation by the Thai contemporary artist Pannaphan Yodmanee. It gained wide attention at the Singapore Biennale 2016 and earned her the 2017 Benesse Prize.
Aftermath is an immersive environment that blends rubble, rocks, concrete fragments – resembling ruins left by natural disasters. It’s a traditional Thai/Buddhist cosmological imagery – painted or inscribed on panels, walls, and reliefs. There’re gold leaf, pigments, religious motifs – mixed with broken architectural pieces and found objects – evoking the feeling of excavation or sacred remains.
The installation explores cycles of destruction and rebirth, natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, floods) and their impact, intersections of Buddhism and the modern world, impermanence – collapsing temples and cosmological diagrams symbolize instability, human and spiritual resilience amid devastation.
Visitors walk through a fractured landscape that feels like stepping into the ruins of a temple after a catastrophe. Painted cosmologies float across cracked surfaces, making it appear as if spiritual and physical worlds have collided.
Place/ New Museum Naoshima, Japan
ft/ Kate Zaniewska
