174 / Neung Jed Si - A Short History of Thailand (Spring 2025)

174 / Neung Jed Si - A Short History of Thailand

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai

This Limited Edition Book by Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is released in conjunction with the exhibition of 174 / Neung Jed Si - A Short History of Thailand at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Los Angeles (May 31 - June 28, 2025 [Gallery 0001: 4478 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles]).

The book includes a photographically illustrated text by Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, along with an introductory essay by the gallery’s author Z.B.

Limited Edition of 50.

Note: Place your order via email and the gallery will send you an invoice directly:

gallery@reisigandtaylorcontemporary.com

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<< I have made it a profession to look at the history of others, so it feels rather peculiar to finally be observing my own. I feel nonetheless- or even more so, a stranger to it.

Since Grandma’s passing in 2021, I came back to the house on Suan Phlu to find family photos and letters dug up, stacked in plastic bags or shoved into the many haphazard drawers around the house. I find myself fascinated by this time before my time. Having lived most of my life abroad, I’ve always felt estranged from this family history. 

Who are these people? 

How did they find each other? 

How do their stories inform mine? >>*

*(Excerpt from Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, 174 / Neung Jed Si – A Short History of Thailand (Los Angeles: Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, 2025).)

….

174 / Neung Jed Si - A Short History of Thailand

Neung Jed Si is a new research project that uses my family archive to create a mythic origin story for our chosen exile from Thailand. Initially conceived as a video essay, it now extends to an immersive installation and a print publication.

Neung Jed Si moves through a meditation on love and how the lover must journey to be reunited with their beloved. 

Beginning with Pridi Banomyong, my ancestor who was forced into self-exile by a military coup in the 1940s, the narrative expands on our legacy of diaspora and inner alienation from our country of origin. Reflecting this origin-story along personal photographs and letters that surfaced in the process of returning to my Grandma’s house in Thailand, the timeframe of the work ranges from my parents’ long-distance relationship during my father’s studies, to the moment of their decision to remain abroad. Simultaneously, my family traces back to the historical capital of Ayutthaya and services to the king. Conflicted between these two tensions, sedentary and migrant, monarchist and revolutionary, shorelines and bodies of water become recurring motifs that represent this generational discomfort and desire for motion.

—Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai

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Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (b. Bangkok, Thailand) is a transdisciplinary artist, curator and art worker, currently based in St Paul, Minnesota. They received a Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole and a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They hold a BFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and a MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco.

In 2024, their solo exhibition, Pridi in Paris opened at The Fulcrum Press, in Los Angeles. Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, in exhibitions at the ONE Archives at USC Libraries and USC Pacific Asia Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Artists’ Television Access, San Francisco, CA; UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia; esea contemporary, Manchester, UK; CAPC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, France, among others. They participated in the Arizona Biennial 2015 at the Tucson Museum of Art. They held live and online performative lectures at Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA; Marathon Screenings, Los Angeles, CA; Summer University, Performing Arts Forum, Saint Erme-Outre-et-Ramecourt, France; BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, BANGKOK CITY CITY GALLERY, among others.

Their works have appeared in publications, such as Hyperallergic, Carla, Artillery Magazine and the Performance Art Journal and Thai online media, such as the101.world and [BOOKMARK MAGAZINE], an initiative of BANGKOK CITY CITY GALLERY. They received the SOMA Summer Award to attend the SOMA residency in Mexico City in 2016 and was awarded the California Arts Council 2023 Individual Artist Fellowship.

{Biographical information courtesy of the artist.}