Nutthawut Siridejchai

While Nutthawut Siridejchai lived in Thailand, his country of origin, he viewed the world with a different mindset than he does now. After living in the United States, he found that he needed to change his mindset around racism as he learned the country’s history and current political climate through listening to people’s stories and experiencing racism himself. Amidst the public health crisis that highlighted systemic gaps and inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests, Siridejchai created portraits of the people who passed away in 2020. The typed text that makes up the background of each portrait spells out the victims’ stories and their last words.

This collection also includes Siridejchai’s self portraits which he uses to tell his experience of Anti-Asian violence. His portraits explore his silence, rooted in his own fear to talk publicly about these experiences. However, his naturalistic portraits with their dense layers of words and facial expressions work to tell the story of how he endured. Siridejchai makes his art with a commitment to speaking out against systemic racism.

Kamonchanok Phon-ngam

In Kamonchanok Phon-ngam’s fabric, fiber, and mixed media works, she delves into the “Polymath Mindset,” a mindset possessed by those with vast knowledge or proficiencies in many skills. Phon-ngam utilizes this mindset in her creative process, which empowers her to master various media and create multimedia art and examine one's existence between Eastern and Western cultures. Her pieces are made from the culmination of traditional drawing techniques, which she stitches together with collage and indigenous materials.