▷ Yellow Road by Kitikong Tilokwattanotai, 2023 | Collage Painting Get Yours

In his new series, Kitikong continues his exploration of the twists and turns of memory in a work laden with symbolism. While the artist is renowned for his expertise in lacquering, he is also developing a collage technique.

This new technique echoes a tradition from Northern Thailand, the “Tung,” multicolored flags used during Buddhist ceremonies. These assemblages of paper and other colored materials mark the boundaries of sacred sites, inviting the local population to enter and then be offered to the deities. Kitikong appropriates this ancestral practice to create works where the material, charged with history and spirituality, becomes an additional vector of emotion.

Kitikong’s collages are visual narratives in which fragments of paper, in various colors, form complex and vibrant compositions. Each collage is an assemblage of memories, impressions, and sensations, a kind of contemporary mandala where past, present, and future merge.

By incorporating collage into his lacquering process, Kitikong invites the viewer to meditate on the notion of time and the permanence of human beings. The paper fragments, like memories, are traces of the past that still influence our present. By collecting and recombining them, the artist creates works that reveal the complexity of the human soul.