Sirawit Chatu - ARTWORK - Gentle Ghosts with Eyes as Fair

Through the Looking-Glass, and What We Found There, 2026, Acrylic and Canvas, 150x200 cm.

This painting captures a fleeting moment from Anna and the King of Siam (1946), a film produced during the transitional period between the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War. The image depicts the instant when the jewels contained within a glass casket, a royal gift bestowed upon the concubine Tuptim by King Mongkut, are revealed to the viewer through Anna’s perspective.

The glass casket reflects its surroundings, refracting and fragmenting the scene into distorted visual impressions. Reflections from the glass, jewels, and ornamental objects blur the perception of both the objects and the event itself. A passing moment is suspended and frozen in time, held still for repeated contemplation.

I will be there in your dreams, as you will be in mine , 2026, Acrylic and Canvas with gold leaf, 170x250 cm.

The image is derived from The King and I (1956), a film produced within the context of the Cold War. It references a scene in which the concubine Tuptim stages a theatrical adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin as a critique of King Mongkut's royal authority to determine the fate of others, much like a slave owner. When the performance concludes, all that remains is an empty stage and a vast curtain resembling a star-filled cosmos.The subtitle text is taken from Anna and the King (1999), a film produced in the era of globalization. Both versions construct images of nineteenth-century Siam through American dreams, desires, and ideological frameworks. By juxtaposing image and text from different historical moments, the work reflects on the contradictory nature of history against the notion of time as a linear progression.
History revolves like stars within a galaxy. Past, present, and future continually haunt and dream one another without end. Image and text serve the production of history much like a theatrical stage, where a monumental curtain obscures the audience's vision, allowing them to see only what it chooses to reveal.

Untitled, 2026, Acrylic and Canvas, 100 x 120 cm.

This image is copyrighted by Zuma Press and is available for download through Alamy for USD 39. According to the archive, the photograph was taken on 30 June 1956, two days after the release of The King and I.

The date coincided with several significant events. On that day, a Trans World Airlines (TWA) passenger aircraft and a United Airlines flight collided over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 people on board. In Poland, the Poznań Protests against the communist government became a catalyst for the Hungarian Revolution later that year. In Los Angeles, American sprinter Lou Jones set a new 400-metre world record of 45.2 seconds.

During the same period, the Thai government under Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram began easing trade restrictions with China and North Korea on non-strategic goods while continuing to strengthen state infrastructure and maintaining its alliance with the United States through SEATO. Elsewhere, Mao Zedong launched the "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom" campaign, and Jackson Pollock died in a car accident.

Story of The Eye, 2026, Acrylic on wood with 19th Century Thai traditional, pedestal tray, 20x20x10 cm

Extending the ideas explored in Through the Looking-Glass, and What We Found There, this work stages a dialogue between a nineteenth-century antique object, an image from a twentieth-century film, and the contemporary context in which the work is created and exhibited in the twenty-first century. It reflects on visual experience as a means of traversing space and time, while considering the mirror as both a reflective surface for looking and self-examination, and as a cultural construct that simultaneously excludes, embraces, and binds us together.