Harit Srikhao

Incubus, 2020

It started when the great king died at 88 and an 18-year-old was murdered in a military training camp. There an artist found a mass of broken royal prototype sculptures in an abandoned state gallery.

Their stories are woven into a hidden fable of royal monuments that still take centre stage. Rumour has it, the real models behind those statues were strong, ordinary folk, just like the person who died in a military training camp. They became representatives of a fantasised ideal history. And while the great kings live forever as glorious monuments, the person whose body was exploited is left to be mysteriously forgotten, like these prototype sculptures.

Incubus layers facts, myths, gossips, propaganda, history and lore spoken by elders. The series explores the tensions between fantasy and reality by looking back on a tangled past to reinterpret what might be tomorrow.

Harit Srikhao (b. 1995 in Bangkok, Thailand) lives and works in Bangkok.