Som Supaparinya: Mo num en ts- Exhibition

Museion presents Mo num en ts (2025), a film by Thai artist Som Supaparinya, developed as part of the Han Nefkens Foundation Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant 2024.

For over twenty years, Supaparinya has worked at the intersection of historical research and fieldwork, exploring the landscapes of Southeast Asia as places shaped by political ideologies, ecological transformations, and collective memories. In Mo num en ts, the artist turns her attention to the long-term impact of Cold War infrastructures in the Mekong region. Dams, roads, and electricity networks emerge not only as signs of modernisation, but as enduring structures that continue to shape territories, communities, and environments.

Presented as a video installation, the work weaves together newly produced material with archival footage drawn from Cold War media and propaganda. Through a layered and fragmentary visual language, the film brings multiple temporalities and perspectives into dialogue, resisting linear narrative in favour of a more complex and open reading of history.

The project was realised in collaboration with international partner institutions, including the Jim Thompson Art Center (Bangkok), The Outpost (Hanoi), the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), and the Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai). Following its presentation at these venues, the work will enter the Museion collection.

With Mo num en ts, Supaparinya approaches landscape as a living archive, in which political decisions, ecological processes, and human experiences remain inscribed over time.