Ariane Sutthavong

Ariane Sutthavong works across curatorial, editorial and discursive formats, moving through collective processes and the uneasy intersection of art and politics. Her practice often emerges from sites of friction—between languages, temporalities or social imaginaries—and seeks to hold space for forms of knowledge that do not readily translate. She has delivered exhibitions, programs and talks for Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, Asian Art Biennial (2024); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; documenta fifteen; Bangkok Biennial (2020); and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum among others. From 2020 to 2025, Ariane co-founded and co-led the inappropriate BOOK CLUB, an ongoing initiative centred on the collective reading and writing of texts to support a third view of contemporary art in Thailand, beyond both the confines of the state and the interests of capital.

Her archival research on Suwanni Sukhontha’s multifaceted legacy reflects the writer’s entanglements with shifting aesthetics and politics, as well as the gender and class roles in Thai modernity. Invoking the opacity and fragmentation that mark acts of transmission, the project is conceived as a body of footnotes, translations, and marginalia circling an absent centre.

Walid Raad, Translator’s introduction (Arabic edition) (2016); Nadia Guerroui, Friction in Plain Sight V (2021) in “Thresholds, Doors, Portals…” (2025) at Cloud Seven - Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, curated by Ariane Sutthavong.

 

Nathalie Muchamad, Butterfly (2015); Tarek Lakhrissi, Betraying Heritage, Betraying Trust, Betraying Guts (2022) in “Thresholds, Doors, Portals…” (2025) at Cloud Seven - Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, curated by Ariane Sutthavong.

 

Sara Enrico, Camerino (2023) in “I live in constant fear of       . But I digress. The club is bumping, the alcohol is flowing, everybody looks good. There is much pain in the world but not in this room.” (2023) at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, curated by Ariane Sutthavong, Christy O’Beirne and Katherine Hamilton.

 

Inaugural inappropriate BOOK CLUB conversation in the series “Art and Politics in the Age of Radical Appropriation” at the Bangkok Biennial (2021) with Yates McKee.

 

"Lalana" — the women’s magazine founded by Suwanni Sukhontha, first published in 1973.