Bangkok Through Poster 2024Thailand Postlitical Fiction

The fifth annual Bangkok Through Poster exhibition opened at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok yesterday. This year’s theme is Thailand Postlitical Fiction: poster designs for imaginary movies commenting on Thai politics. Sixty-seven posters were selected from works submitted by artists, students, and design studios, and many of the posters are accompanied by synopses for the fictitious films they illustrate.

A handful of posters in the exhibition refer to past political violence. One example is a spoof horror film titled Cursed Siam (สาปสยาม) by Canyouhearcloud, referencing the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. Two posters refer to the 2010 crackdown at Ratchaprasong: All the Light We Can(not) See by Wonderwhale Studio (which uses candles to represent the red-shirt victims), and Animal Sanctuary by Chonlatorn Wongrussamee (which emphasises the killing of wounded protesters sheltering at Wat Pathum Wanaram). Two posters—More Conceal, More Reveal (ยิ่งปกปิด ยิ่งเปิดเผย) by Deepend Studio, and Unfortunately by Njorvks—highlight former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s statement that “unfortunately, some people died” at Ratchaprasong. Kawinnate Konklong’s short film Unfortunately (แค่วันที่โชคร้าย), released last year, also refers to Abhisit’s dismissive comment.

Most of the posters, however, focus on more recent events. Thaksin Shinawatra and his daughter Paetongtarn (the current Prime Minister) are the most common theme, featuring on ten posters: The Missing (You Too Much) (ผมคิดถึงคุณ) by Setthawuth K. (a spoof of The Shining), The Chair of the Promise Land [sic] by Genji Kun, The Zone of Shinnawatra [sic] by Nam.Ni.Ang, The Successor by Gaw Chutima, Hereditary by Kritsaran Hanamonset, The Loop by Thalufah, The Invisible Storm by Antizeptic, The Landslider by Sina Wittayawiroj (a diptych inspired by The Lobster), and Closing the Scenes (ปิดฉาก) by Thiraphon Singlor.

The student protest movement inspired almost as many posters as the Shinawatras, including Chorn Yuan’s A Smile. There are two that refer to 16th October 2020, when riot police used water cannon to disperse protesters at Siam Square: 16 10 63 by PrachathipaType, and Sky Flood, Stars Fall (น้ำท่วมฟ้า ปลากินดาว) by Tnop Design. Panita Siriwongwan-ngarm’s Here at Din Daeng Police Station, a Boy Named Varit Died (ที่นี่ (สน.ดินแดง) มีคน ตาย ชื่อ ด.ช.วาฤทธิ์) honours a 15-year-old boy who was shot at a protest in 2021.

Protest leader Arnon Nampa appears in two posters: The Lawyer Devil (ทนายปีศาจ) by Shake and Bake Studio, and The Letter (จดหมายรัก) by Tanis Werasakwong (known as Sa-ard). The Letter refers to letters he wrote to his family from prison, as does Vichart Somkaew’s short film The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ), released this year. Arnon’s fellow protest leader Parit Chirawak features in The Penguin 112 by director Chaweng Chaiyawan (a reference to Parit’s nickname and the lèse-majesté charges he faces).

Article 112 also inspired perhaps the strongest poster in the exhibition, Pssyppl’s Lèse-majesté, which depicts blue figures strangling red ones with nooses, a comment on the maliciousness and severity of lèse-majesté prosecutions. Bangkok Through Poster 2024 runs until 22nd December.

Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art

Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art, published this week, documents the professional history of tattooing in Europe and America over the last 300 years. Martin Hildebrandt, who opened a tattoo parlour in New York in 1858, is “widely considered to be the first professional tattooer in the Western world”, though author Matt Lodder reveals that tattooing was a recognised profession in England as far back as 1719. Lodder traces the subsequent development of tattooing as an art form, including the tattoo renaissance led by American artists such as Lyle Tuttle, and the book includes many previously unpublished illustrations of tattoo photographs, designs, and ephemera.

Tattoo (Tatoueurs, Tatoues) is another key work of tattoo history. Body Decoration (Geschmückte Haut, by Karl Gröning) and The World of Tattoo (De wereld van tatoeage) illustrate tribal tattooing from around the world. The History of Tattooing, published ninety-nine years ago, was the first book on the subject. Andrea Juno and V. Vale’s Modern Primitives, discussed at length in Lodder’s book, is an influential guide to contemporary body modification. The term ‘tattoo renaissance’ was coined by Amie Hill in a cover story for Rolling Stone (no. 67), reprinted in Side-Saddle on the Golden Calf.

Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage

The standard histories of collage as an artistic practice, such as Collage by Brandon Taylor, trace its origins to 1912, and the newspaper cuttings appliquéd to Cubist paintings by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Herta Wescher’s Collage (Die Collage), the definitive work on the subject, discussed nineteenth century examples in addition to the Cubists and their successors. The recent exhibition Cut and Paste antedated the technique by 400 years, though Freya Gowrley’s groundbreaking book Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage, published this week, traces the history of collage over thousands of years.

As she writes in her introduction, Gowrley (who contributed to the Cut and Paste exhibition catalogue) “aims to provide a more expansive history of collage than has previously been produced.” The book’s publisher calls it a “global history of collage from the origins of paper to today”, and at 400 pages it lives up to that description. All previous histories of collage have focused entirely on European and American artists, though the scope of Gowrley’s book is truly international, with coverage of collage in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Again, unlike previous histories of the topic, Fragmentary Forms considers collage not only as fine art, but also examines its role in taxonomic collections, devotional objects, printed ephemera, and domestic craftmaking.

Bangkok Art Biennale 2024

After Beyond Bliss (สุขสะพรั่ง พลังอาร์ต) in 2018, Escape Routes (ศิลป์สร้าง ทางสุข) in 2020, and Chaos:Calm (โกลาหล:สงบสุข) in 2022, the fourth Bangkok Art Biennale’s theme is Nurture Gaia (รักษา กายา). As in previous years, the Biennale (บางกอก อาร์ต เบียนนาเล่) is being held at multiple venues around the city, from galleries to temples. The event opened on 24th October, and runs until 25th February next year.

Taiki Sakpisit’s video installation Dream Sequence (ฝันทิพย์), showing at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, consists of static shots filmed at the house in Paris where Pridi Banomyong lived during his years in exile from Thailand until his death in 1983. The house was purchased this year by Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, founder of the Future Forward party, cementing the property as a symbol of progressive politics thwarted by the establishment, and the Biennale catalogue describes Tiaki’s video as “a kaleidoscopic feast of delusion, desperation, oppression, and perpetual nightmares rooted in Thailand’s flawed democracy.”

Dispatch

Dispatch, an exhibition of photographs by R. Scott Davis, opened at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on 1st November, and runs until 1st December. Davis photographed EMS workers as they attended emergency calls and accidents, and human specimens at Bangkok’s Central Institute of Forensic Science.

Tsurisaki Kiyotaka also photographed fatal accidents and crime scenes in Bangkok, though his images focus on the victims rather than the EMS staff. The Netflix series Bangkok Breaking (มหานครเมืองลวง) dramatised the competition between the city’s various EMS teams.

Tak Bai Can’t Breathe

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing seven people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

For almost two decades, successive governments have failed to bring the security forces to justice for the unlawful deaths at Tak Bai. Finally, earlier this year, just months before the twenty-year statute of limitations expires, seven former police and military officers were charged with the murder of the Tak Bai victims. However, there has been no attempt to enforce the arrest warrants issued for them. The court has announced that it will simply wait until midnight on 25th October for the seven men to present themselves voluntarily and, if they choose not to hand themselves in, the cases against them will be dropped.

The injustice of Tak Bai is heartbreaking, though sadly not unusual in Thailand. At the time of the Tak Bai incident, the government even prohibited footage of the event from being broadcast on television, though the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD, ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’), in defiance of the ban. Tak Bai footage also appears in Teerawat Rujenatham’s short film Tak Bai, and in two documentaries: This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) by Thunska Pansittivorakul, and 18 Years by Prempapat Plittapolkranpim. Walai Buppha’s documentary 20 Years Later features interviews with the families of the victims. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of Tak Bai by Thai filmmakers.)

Yesterday evening, performance artist Jakkrapan Sriwichai lay in seventy-eight different positions, his hands bound behind his back, at Tha Pae Gate in Chiang Mai (photographed by Prachatai). His performance, Tak Bai Can’t Breathe (ตากใบหายใจไม่ออก), memorialised the seventy-eight protesters who died of suffocation, and highlighted the urgent need to enforce the arrest warrants of the men accused of their murder.

Other events commemorating the twentieth anniversary include 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’), #ตากใบต้องไม่เงียบ (‘Tak Bai must not be silenced’), Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน), Takbai 20th Year Memorization (จดจำ 20 ปี ตากใบ), and Sol Bar Talk Special (คืนนี้ ไม่มีความยุติธรรม ให้ตากใบ). Previous exhibitions commemorating Tak Bai include Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ), รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’), Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน), Living Memories (ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่), and Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong. Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) installation features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim. The victims’ names are listed in two installations: Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม).

Cartooning the ASEAN Way of Non-Interference and Consensus

An exhibition of cartoons and comics, Cartooning the ASEAN Way of Non-Interference and Consensus (การ์ตูนภาพ วิถีอาเซียน หลักการการไม่แทรกแซงกิจการภายใน และหลักฉันทามติของประชาคมอาเซียน), opens today at SAE Junction in Bangkok and runs until 3rd November. The exhibition (and its spiral-bound catalogue) features Pornnipa Baoniaw’s comic Everything in the World Is Beautiful (ทุกอย่างในโลกล้วนสวยงาม), in which she compares countries in Southeast Asia to delicate flowers that need nurturing, though her story ends with a montage of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs showing military dominance in the region. The image representing Thailand is a photo of a tank on the streets of Bangkok when the 2006 coup took place.

Imago

Harit Srikhao’s exhibition Imago opened at Bangkok CityCity Gallery on 12th October, and runs until 30th November. Its title describes the final stage of an insect’s metamorphosis into an adult, reflecting the artist’s own maturity. Harit has also undergone a process of art therapy, and the resulting sense of empowerment—like an insect’s emergence from its pupal case—made Imago possible.

The exhibition includes a video installation, also titled Imago, which combines photography with stop-motion animation. The exhibition leaflet refers to “surrendering the autonomy of one’s own image and the struggle in reclaiming it,” a reference to intimate video footage of Harit and his former partner, director Thunska Pansittivorakul. After their relationship ended, Thunska used this deeply personal material in his documentary Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์).

Harit has now taken back control of this representation of his past, by inserting one of the sexually explicit video clips—which appeared at the beginning of Avalon—into Imago. The installation also includes screenshots of intimidating emails that Harit received about the graphic footage, which he printed out and cut into paper butterflies, turning toxic memories into art that symbolises his independence.

These paper butterflies also feature on the cover of Window, a CD single (limited to 300 copies) featuring music from the Imago soundtrack. One of Harit’s previous exhibitions, Whitewash, was censored by the military in 2017, inspiring Aditya Assarat’s Sunset, a segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand. Harit has codirected the documentaries Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล) and sPACEtIME (กาลอวกาศ).

Resistant with Style

Resistant with Style [sic], an exhibition of t-shirts with political slogans from the Museum of Popular History’s collection, opens today at The Fort in Bangkok and runs until 23rd October. A similar collection of t-shirts was included in the Never Again exhibition in 2019.

งานรำลึก 48 ปี เหตุการณ์ 6 ตุลาฯ 2519(‘commemorating the 48th anniversary of 6th Oct. 1976’)

This week, Thammasat University will commemorate the 48th anniversary of the 6th October 1976 massacre. A pop-up exhibition, ต่างความคิดผิดถึงตาย (‘deadly misconceptions’), will be held at Thammasat’s Sri Burapha Auditorium from tomorrow until 6th October. (A documentary with the same title was released on DVD in 2011.) At the same time, Thammasat’s Pridi Banomyong Library will host 6 ตุลาฯ กระจกส่องสังคมไทย (‘6th Oct., mirror of Thai society’), an exhibition exploring the wider context of the event. (These exhibitions were scheduled to open today, but as of this afternoon the library display was cordened off and the auditorium was closed.)

Three short documentaries will be screened at Thammasat on 5th October. Respectfully Yours (ดวยความนบถอ), directed by Patporn Phoothong and Puangthong Pawakapan, features interviews with families of massacre victims. For The Two Brothers (สองพนอง), Patporn and Teerawat Rujenatham interviewed relatives of the two young men were hanged by police for campaigning against the return of Thanom Kittikachorn from exile. In Manussak Dokmai’s Don’t Forget Me (อย่าลืมฉัน), archive footage of 6th October is accompanied by narration from a documentary on the Mlabri tribe, providing an ironic counterpoint to the violent imagery.

There will also be an exhibition by the Museum of Popular History at Thammasat on 6th October, ก่อนจะถึงรุ่งสาง 6 ตุลา (‘before the dawn of 6th Oct.’). Elsewhere in Bangkok, another 6th October photography exhibition, ไม่ใช่ 6 ตุลาฟื้นคืนชีพ แต่รากเหง้าของ ปัญญาชนนั้นยังอยู่ (‘not a 6th Oct. resurrection, but intellectual roots remain’), will open at Hope Space tomorrow. The Two Brothers will be screened there on the opening day.

ก่อนจะถึงรุ่งสาง 6 ตุลา (‘before the dawn of 6th Oct.’)

The Museum of Popular History will stage an exhibition at Thammasat University on 6th October, to commemorate the anniversary of the massacre that took place there on 6th October 1976. The exhibition, ก่อนจะถึงรุ่งสาง 6 ตุลา (‘before the dawn of 6th Oct.’) at Sri Burapha Auditorium, will examine the long-term causes of the massacre, particularly the anti-Communist propaganda prevalent in the media during the 1970s. Using newspapers and posters from the period, the exhibition will highlight the language and imagery used to demonise the Thammasat students. (Many of the items will also be shown at a similar one-day exhibition, October Stories: Uprising and Strike Back, at Srinakharinwirot University on 17th October.)

Books and supplements related to the 14th October 1973 protests will also be on display, as will the contents of the กล่องฟ้าสาง (‘box of dawn’), a ‘museum in a box’ released in 2021. The poster Just Because You Can’t See It, Doesn’t Mean It Didn’t Happen features outlines of the bodies of the two men hanged for protesting against Thanom Kittikachorn’s return from exile. Ladkrabang Politics, a group of students from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology in Ladkrabang, painted a silhouette of a hanged student—Hangman—alongside a list of the names of the victims of 6th October. Hangman will be displayed with a folding chair propped up against it, in a reference to a much-reproduced Neal Ulevich photograph of the massacre.

Hope Space

Hope Space in Bangkok will commemorate the anniversary of the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University with the ไม่ใช่ 6 ตุลาฟื้นคืนชีพ แต่รากเหง้าของ ปัญญาชนนั้นยังอยู่ (‘not a 6th Oct. resurrection, but intellectual roots remain’) exhibition from 2nd to 27th October. The show features photographs of the events of 1976, and of the 14th October 1973 protest. Contact sheets will be displayed on tables for examination via a loupe. A photocopy of a complete edition of the infamous 6th October 1976 issue of Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) will also be on display.

Patporn Phoothong and Teerawat Rujenatham’s short documentary The Two Brothers (สองพี่น้อง) will be screened on the opening day. Silenced Memories (ความทรงจ ไรเสยง), directed by Patporn and Saowanee Sangkara, will be shown on 13th October.

On show alongside the Thammasat exhibition is 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’), a photography exhibition commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Tak Bai incident, including a large image of the protesters displayed on an easel. Walai Buppha’s new Tak Bai documentary 20 Years Later will be shown on 20th October, the day after its premiere at TK Park in Narathiwat.

Indelible Memory: 20 Years Tak Bai

This year is the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing seven people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

The government prohibited the broadcasting of video footage of the incident, though in defiance of the ban, the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD—ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’)—with its October–December 2004 issue (vol. 2, no. 4). The footage is also included in Teerawat Rujenatham’s short film Tak Bai, and in two documentaries: Thunska Pansittivorakul’s This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) and Prempapat Plittapolkranpim’s 18 Years. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of Tak Bai by Thai filmmakers.)

In 2023, Patani Artspace held the รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’) exhibition, the Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ) exhibition took place at Silpakorn and Thammasat universities, and Manit Sriwanichpoom’s Tak Bai paintings were shown at the Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก) exhibition. Heard the Unheard featured the personal possessions of seventeen people who died at Tak Bai—including a ฿100 banknote retrieved from the body of a sixteen-year-old boy, Imron—displayed alongside recollections from the victims’ relatives.

Earlier this year, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary, the seventeen artefacts were split between two exhibitions: Living Memories (ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่) at SEA Junction, and Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน) at the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. The items on display were also photographed in Tak Bai (ลิ้มรสความทรงจำ), edited by Kusra Kamawan Mukdawijitra.

Next week, an expanded version of Indelible Memory will open at TK Park in Narathiwat, where it will be on display for the entire month of October. This exhibition has a particular sense of urgency, as prosecutions for the unlawful killings are finally under way, just weeks before the twenty-year statute of limitations expires. It will include the premiere of 20 Years Later, a documentary directed by Walai Buppha, on 19th October. The film will also be shown on the following day at Hope Space in Bangkok.

Tak Bai photographs were also shown at the Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน) exhibition in 2022. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong.

Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) installation features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim, and is reproduced in his book The Patani Art of Struggle (سني ڤتاني چاراو او سها). It was first installed, a few days after the massacre, at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani, and the grave markers were accompanied by rifles wrapped in white cloth. In 2017, it was recreated at Patani Artspace and then mounted on a plinth containing Pattani soil at the Patani Semasa (ปาตานี ร่วมสมัย) exhibition in Chiang Mai.

Two further installations—Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม)—both include lists of the Tak Bai victims’ names. Photophobia, 78, and Violence in Tak Bai were all included in the Patani Semasa exhibition. (The exhibition catalogue gives Violence in Tak Bai a milder alternative title, Remember at Tak Bai.)

Artn’t

Chiang Mai’s Provincial Court yesterday upheld an earlier dismissal of lèse-majesté charges against Vitthaya Klangnil, a member of the performance art group Artn’t. The case against Vitthaya was originally dismissed on 23rd May last year. (He was previously convicted of lèse-majesté in relation to another case—displaying a modified version of the Thai flag—and received a suspended sentence.)

Charges against Vitthaya were filed after a performance on 1st May 2021, during which he climbed onto Chiang Mai University’s main entrance and poured red paint over himself. Three members of university staff noticed that, at one point, Vitthaya lay on his back and raised one of his feet in the air. There is a portrait of King Rama X above the entrance, and the staff members filed a police complaint noting that pointing a foot at someone is considered offensive in Thai culture. The case was dismissed as the court ruled that, although his gesture was disrespectful, there was insufficient evidence that Vitthaya deliberately intended to insult the King.

The performance is featured in Red Poetry (ความกวีสีแดง), a documentary by Supamok Silarak about Vitthaya’s various legal cases. Supamok’s film was screened in the Short Film Marathon 27 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 27), at The 27th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 27), in the Short 27 Awarded Film Screening programme, and at Wildtype Middle Class 2024. It has also been shown in Chiang Mai (most recently in February), Salaya, and Phatthalung. A shorter version of the film—Red Poetry: Verse 1 (เราไป ไหน ได้)—had its premiere at Wildtype 2022.

Strangely Real

The Strangely Real group exhibition at Noble Play in Bangkok opened on 19th August and runs until 26th September. The exhibition includes Kanya Charoensupkul’s Flag: Comet/May 1992 (ธง ดาวหาง/พฤษภาคม 2535), one of a series of acrylic flag paintings capturing her emotional reactions—primarily melancholy and hopelessness—to the events of ‘Black May’ in 1992.

Strangely Real also features an installation by Tawee Ratchaneekorn, Prison (คุก) which, as the label describes rather euphemistically, “reflects the stringent laws of the Thai state, particularly in crowd control during political expressions, stemming from long-standing political issues.” (Prison was created for Tawee’s Bangkok Art and Culture Centre retrospective, and is the artist’s commentary on the state suppression of student protests over the past few years.)

ตาดูดาว เท้าติดดิน (‘looking at the stars, feet on the ground’)

In 2013, Thaksin Shinawatra published a comic adaptation of his autobiography, ตาดูดาว เท้าติดดิน (‘looking at the stars, feet on the ground’). The book, published by Thaksin’s own Thaicom company, was a vanity project that reimagined his life as an inspirational rags-to-riches tale. (As Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker wrote in Thaksin, their book on the former PM, “Thaksin has mythologized his life story as a poor boy made good.”) The comic was later converted into a seven-part animated series, aimed at an even younger audience, released on YouTube in 2014.

Surprisingly, ตาดูดาว เท้าติดดิน was the second comic biography of Thaksin. The first was published shortly after the 2006 coup that removed him from office. ชีวิตทักษิณ บันทึกประวัติศาสตร์ นายกของไทยคนที่ 23 ที่มีทั้งคนรัก คนชัง สุดท้ายถูกยึดอำนาจ! (‘Thaksin’s life: a historical record of how the 23rd Prime Minister of Thailand, who had both lovers and haters, finally seized power!’) is similarly hagiographic, though drawn in a more realistic style for a slightly older readership.