Samak Kosem

Samak Kosem works in the field of anthropology and visual culture, his works portrayed through ethnography by movie image, photography, object and text. His conceptualising the ideas of queer, posthuman and trans-borders/bodies to refigure the possibility of its limits. Kosem graduated from Chiang Mai University with a BS in Anthropology in 2009 and MA in Social Development in 2013. He decided to continue his doctoral study at Chiang Mai University in Social Sciences to combine art and academics together, his current project to examine complexes of visuality and to investigate through the frameworks of transnational sexuality that circulate and connect to sexual discourse, practice and subjectivities on individual migratory and religiosity.

Kosem joined the first edition of Bangkok Art Biennale (2019) and his work was commissioned by Sunpride Foundation to produce the installation work Other Sheep (not of this fold) with artist Sornrapat Patharakorn (Bangkok, 2019). Kosem’s solo exhibitions include “Sacrifice” (VER Gallery Project Room, Bangkok, Thailand, 2019); “Not Waving But Drowning” (Gallery Seescape, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2019); “Otherwise Inside” (WTF Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand, 2018). His recent group exhibitions include “Trans-local Migrants on the Water” (Aura Contemporary Art Foundation, Osaka, Japan, 2021); “Displace, Embody” (Vargas Museum, The Philippines, 2020); “Survival of the Exceptional” (Tainan Art Museum, Taiwan, 2020); “Phantoms and Aliens” (Richard Koh Gallery, Singapore, 2020); “Bad Bodies” (Tomorrow Maybe Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019); his writing has recently been published by Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.

Kosem currently lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand.