soi sa:m and SHONE PUIPIA cordially invite you to an exhibition of artists’ collaborations created for Collection 2020 Part I “Cloudbusting”, featuring IWANNABANGKOK©, Montis Songsombat, and Naraphat Sakarthornsap. 

“Cloudbusting” started as a dialogue between SHONE PUIPIA’s designs and singer-songwriter Uma Bunnag’s music. For the launch of the collection, the showroom installation included a series of works titled, “The Quarantined Artists”, created by members of Shone’s family during lockdown. Following up to this project, we extended this collaboration to other young Thai creatives, whom we think can express unique perspectives on the collection in their work. The three artists presented here each come from different backgrounds, but all represent the vibrant youthful energy within the Thai arts and design community. In response to the collection, their works talk about a search for beauty through video, performance, photography, and flower installation. Once again, the showroom is reimagined, further exploring how clothing can interact with different mediums of art.

IWANNABANGKOK©
“A Beautiful Life”

“A Beautiful Life” is a musical short-film based on a true story about seven girls living in a tiny crowded flat. The tongue-in-cheek film captures these bold characters through a 360˚-camera, showing how the girls are willing to live in such a small space, where everyone is literally in each other’s faces, for the sake of fashion. Some drama and tensions are inevitable. Everything is possible for them when 'beauty' becomes their ultimate goal in life. To achieve that ‘beauty’, they must save every bit of coin to get their hands on SHONE PUIPIA’s latest collections. In this place, they shared the happiest/craziest/saddest moments and would never exchange them for anything.

The film stars talents Hong Yun Kang, Jakkawan Yokin, Nalin Satearrujikanon, Nazer Bennui, Mook Attakanwong, Samita Wang, and Wongbaworn Pansuwan.

IWANNABANGKOK© is a naughty campaign reimagining Bangkok with its youth energy, founded by duo Adisak Jirasakkasem and Supakorn Buaruan in 2014.

MONTIS SONGSOMBAT
“Untitled”

Montis Songsombat uses photography as a medium to communicate his values and explorations. His work currently explores the pursuit of beauty and of those striving for it. The series of photographs created for this exhibition is an investigation of beauty in which curiosity and desire to explore its mysteries transcend the initial intention.

Model Primmy Patnasiri

Montis Songsombat is a Thai photographer based in New York and Bangkok. Focusing on fashion photography, he also ventures into fine art. Songsombat studied Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he discovered his love for photography while working with New York-based womenswear label, Peter Do.

NARAPHAT SAKARTHORNSAP
“The Cage (No.2)”

“Since the pandemic outbreak, being at home now has never felt more suffocating. The morning hours after waking up, when everyone has left home for work used to bring me a sense of joy. The freedom that came with having meals alone and these blissful personal moments have now disappeared. These times have forced me to see my family face-to-face everyday. In this disrupted environment, I feel trapped, out-of-place, and hopeless; like a cactus, deprived of sunlight and submerged deep in water, struggling to survive. Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of beauty hidden underneath this suffering. Without this pandemic, would I get to spend these rare times with my family ever again? The bittersweet reality is that you must learn to adapt and coexist, with both the virus and the ‘family’.”

Naraphat Sakarthornsap is a Bangkok-based artist. In his work, Naraphat presents stories of inequality in the society through photography and installation art, in which flowers play the leading role. Naraphat uses flowers as symbols with profound meanings. They have become the key to unlock answers that are discreetly hidden in his work. Naraphat’s photographs portray these flowers as delicate and beautiful, but perhaps they reflect the deepest part of his devastated heart.