A World Reborn — Jacky Tsai at MOCA Bangkok
Reincarnation — the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Southeast Asia.

13th May 2023

Reincarnation marked a major milestone for Jacky Tsai: his first solo museum exhibition in Southeast Asia. Presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA BANGKOK) in 2023, the exhibition brought together 37 works across painting, sculpture, lacquer carving, printmaking, textiles and digital art, including an experimental holographic chamber shown for the first time.

Within the museum’s luminous architecture, pink and pale-blue galleries, circular openings and long sightlines created a vivid setting for Tsai’s meeting of Eastern traditions and Western pop culture. Monumental works and intimate details unfolded together, turning the exhibition into a journey through the many forms of his practice.

The museum’s entrance, transformed with Jacky Tsai’s artwork for Reincarnation.

A new life, a new setting

At the heart of Reincarnation was the possibility of renewal. The floral skull, a recurring motif in Tsai’s work, becomes a place where mortality and flourishing coexist. Across works shaped by the pandemic and its aftermath, colour and humour sit beside reflections on uncertainty, isolation and the wish to begin again.

The Bangkok presentation also opened a dialogue with its host city. In Bangkok Skull, Thai architectural and decorative references enter Tsai’s richly layered visual world. Its monumental carved surface finds a striking counterpart in the museum’s soaring entrance hall, where the scale of the work can be read against the architecture and the people passing through it.

Bangkok Skull in the museum’s entrance hall. Photograph: Pathipol Ratchata-arpha (ปฏิพล รัชตอาภา), The Cloud.

Painting at the scale of the room

Among the exhibition’s centrepieces was Parody of Jay’s Music, Tsai’s panoramic painting inspired by Jay Chou’s songs, music videos and films. Its crowded narrative brings together Chinese imagery, popular culture and imagined encounters in a single expansive composition.

Nearby, Midas Touch translated the drama of a painted gesture into sculptural space. The relationship between the suspended white hand and its golden counterpart gave the main gallery a powerful focal point, connecting the works on the walls with the space through which visitors moved.

Jacky Tsai with Parody of Jay’s Music. Photograph: Pathipol Ratchata-arpha (ปฏิพล รัชตอาภา), The Cloud.

A first encounter with the holographic chamber

First presented in Bangkok, the experimental holographic chamber introduced another dimension to the exhibition. Against a dark interior, a luminous figure appears to recede through a sequence of reflections, carrying the image beyond the boundaries of a conventional screen.

The chamber extended Tsai’s exploration of the relationship between physical objects and digital images. Its shifting sense of depth offered a different way to encounter his work: as an image experienced in space.

The experimental holographic chamber, first presented at MOCA BANGKOK in 2023.

Another life inside the image

Selected paintings also had an augmented-reality dimension. By scanning the accompanying QR codes with a phone, visitors could discover animated versions of the works, revealing movement within images that initially appeared still.

This connection between the painted surface and a moving image allowed the exhibition’s theme of renewal to become part of the act of looking. A work could be encountered first as a physical painting and then again through an additional digital layer.

A phone reveals the animated AR layer of The Dance. Photograph: Pathipol Ratchata-arpha (ปฏิพล รัชตอาภา), The Cloud.

Behind the exhibition

The finished galleries were the result of close work between the artist, his team and the museum. Installation photographs show the scale of that undertaking: positioning the panoramic painting, assembling the central sculpture and balancing individual works within the larger gallery sequence.

Installing the panoramic painting before the galleries opened.

Preparing the main gallery and its suspended sculpture. / The team at work on the suspended white hand.

An official exhibition merchandise collection accompanied the presentation at MOCA BANGKOK.

For Tsai, Reincarnation established a significant new museum chapter in Southeast Asia — one that brought the breadth of his practice into view while making room for new experiments.

Jacky Tsai in traditional Thai dress at MOCA BANGKOK.

Reincarnation
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA BANGKOK), Thailand · 2023

Explore the exhibition archive ↗
In conversation with The Cloud and the Thai press ↗

Selected exhibition photographs by Pathipol Ratchata-arpha (ปฏิพล รัชตอาภา) for The Cloud — In Design, credited individually above. Additional images from Jacky Tsai Studio’s exhibition archive.