Photojournalist Vinai Dithajohn’s exhibition Red, Yellow and Beyond is on show at two adjacent Bangkok galleries: Red and Yellow at VS Gallery and Beyond at Cartel Artspace. Vinai’s photographs cover more than fifteen years of political polarisation in Thailand, from 2005 to the present day. Red, Yellow and Beyond opened on 22nd April, and runs until 2nd July.
At Red and Yellow, which visitors enter through red and yellow curtains, photos of yellow-shirt and red-shirt rallies are hung on opposite walls of a corridor, so that the two opposing groups face each other. This echoes Vinai’s exhibition last year — ทางราษฎร์กิโลเมตรที่ 0 (‘the people’s road, 0km’) — which featured images of student protesters opposite a photo of a soldier. Beyond is dominated by a portrait of a student protester at twilight, which occupies an entire wall of the gallery. One of the most striking photos shows Panusaya Sithjirawattanakul delivering her taboo-breaking speech calling for reform of the monarchy.
At Red and Yellow, which visitors enter through red and yellow curtains, photos of yellow-shirt and red-shirt rallies are hung on opposite walls of a corridor, so that the two opposing groups face each other. This echoes Vinai’s exhibition last year — ทางราษฎร์กิโลเมตรที่ 0 (‘the people’s road, 0km’) — which featured images of student protesters opposite a photo of a soldier. Beyond is dominated by a portrait of a student protester at twilight, which occupies an entire wall of the gallery. One of the most striking photos shows Panusaya Sithjirawattanakul delivering her taboo-breaking speech calling for reform of the monarchy.
Cartel held a similar exhibition last year, Post 2010 (เกียรติภูมิอยู่กลางสนาม), by Karnt Thassanaphak, from 9th June to 9th July. That exhibition featured 112 photographs taken at protest rallies between 2011 and 2021, and its Thai title was a lyric from นักสู้ธุลีดิน (‘ashes of the fighters’), a song by the band Kammachon. The photographs were in colour, in contrast to Karnt’s previous exhibition Gray “Red Shirt”, for which he desaturated the colour in order to focus on the people in the images rather than their red or yellow affiliations. (Gray “Red Shirt” was held at the Pridi Banomyong Institute in Bangkok from 11th February to 6th March 2011. It was also the title of a book released by Karnt last year, in a limited edition of 120 copies.)
Another photographer, Yuttana Arschariyawinyoo, also covered the red-shirt and yellow-shirt movements, in his book Democracy. The recent student protests are the subject of a handful of photobooks: No God No King Only Human, End in This Generation, There’s Always Spring (เมื่อถึงเวลาดอกไม้จะบาน), EBB, and #WhatsHappeningInThailand.
