The Last Resort: Reflections in the Lead-up to the Thailand Biennale 2025by Adjunct Curator, Asia Pacific, at Tate ModernHera Chan

Andrew Thomas Huang, The Deer of Nine Colors (2025). Commissioned by Thailand Biennale, Phuket. Image courtesy of the artist.

As part of a series of reflections by our fellows, we have partnered with ArtReview to publish a collection of writings that will explore and unlock the future of curatorial and research practice. As one of the curators of the Thailand Biennale 2025, our fellow Hera Chan reflects on Phuket in the lead-up to the exhibition's opening, considering how the island’s polished tropical image meets deeper histories, shifting temporalities, and the communities shaping its present.

‘Naturally, when we began this project, I too imagined the tourist-postcard, beach-nomad work situation. What quickly became apparent were the other ways in which that seductive image of the sun-blessed resort island was operating and being operated in Phuket. As a collaborative project, Eternal [Kalpa] is itself a decentralising gesture, inviting reflections and refractions of the island. The image of Phuket as a White Lotus luxury-style tropical paradise is self-inflicted by marshals of the tourist economy who in a recent past-life ran the industrial extraction of island’s tin, tantalum, rubber and coconuts. What draws people to Phuket – tourists and others, ourselves included – is its economic intensity, centred on services and experiences including turning-down beds and recommending authentic road-side food stalls, appraising and reselling gold, hustling people into nightclubs, sex work, the blue economy of marine environments, and even culture work in the contemporary art industry.’

Thailand Biennale: Eternal [Kalpa] will be free and open to the public from 29 November 2025 to 30 April 2026.

Click here to read Hera’s full article for ArtReview, published on 13 November 2025.