An inflated electricity bill charged to a tenant. A tangle of overhead communication cables posing a danger to people on the street. Public transport fares that take an outsized share of a worker’s daily wage. Savings lost to fraudulent merchants on social media.
These are everyday grievances that can easily become part of the background noise of urban life. But at “SPEAK UP — Never Surrender”, an exhibition at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC), such experiences are brought into the gallery and retold through art.
Drawing on some of the approximately 68,000 consumer complaints received by the Thailand Consumers Council, the exhibition brings together around 200 works by two artists whose visual approaches could hardly be more different.
On one side are stark black-and-white storyboard drawings by Booncherd Khem-ngern, a professional storyboard artist who continues to work by hand despite the arrival of AI. Rendered in vigorous, sometimes unsettling lines, the works turn familiar consumer problems into scenes of confrontation: unaffordable transport, unfair rental arrangements, online deception and hazards embedded in the urban environment.
At first glance, some drawings may give off a sense of Japanese manga, but the big difference is that the story draws on real-life suffering - not fiction.
Facing them is a very different visual language.
Television producer and artist Jarinee Metheekul, founder of WX/Z STUDIO, uses vivid colours and portraiture to put human faces back into issues that are often reduced to case numbers and statistics.
Her works are developed from conversations with more than 100 people, during which she recorded not only their faces but also words, emotions and fragments of their experiences directly onto the paintings.
For Jarinee, painting offered a way to keep those experiences alive after their brief appearance in the news cycle.
“When I was producing television programmes, I felt that once a programme had aired, the story was over, but the suffering of the people did not end with the show,” she explains.
As she listened to people recount their experiences, she began drawing them as they spoke. Certain remarks, she says, were so powerful and truthful that she felt compelled to write them immediately onto the paintings before the emotions behind them disappeared.
The resulting portraits are dense with colour and handwritten text. Viewed together on the gallery wall, individual faces form a larger collective image — a reminder that what appears to be one person’s private difficulty may be part of a much broader structural problem.
Two visual languages, one message
The contrast between the two bodies of work is central to the exhibition.
Booncherd’s monochrome drawings focus attention on situations and systems: people caught in unequal transactions, unsafe surroundings or circumstances over which they have little control.
Jarinee’s portraits bring the individual back to the foreground, giving colour, expression and words to people who might otherwise appear only as complainants in official records.
Together, the two visual languages move between the problem and the person living through it.
Behind the artworks are four consumer issues that the Thailand Consumers Council is seeking to address in 2026.
They include stronger identity verification for online sellers to combat fraudulent transactions; action on hazardous overhead communication cables; more affordable public transport, with average travel costs proposed at no more than 10 per cent of the minimum wage; and fairer rental and dormitory contracts covering electricity and water charges, deposits and other conditions that can put tenants at a disadvantage.
The exhibition's title was inspired by an idea repeatedly expressed by Saree Aongsomwang, secretary-general of the Thailand Consumers Council: consumers need bargaining power if they are to secure basic rights and safety.
For Jarinee, “speaking up” therefore means more than complaining or venting frustration on social media.
“It is about knowing that we have rights and having the courage to exercise them,” she says. “If everyone remains silent when injustice occurs, eventually it becomes something society grows accustomed to and accepts without realising it.”
She does not expect visitors to leave the gallery as activists. Rather, she hopes the exhibition will leave them with the understanding that if they encounter unfair treatment themselves, submission is not their only option.
“The voice of an ordinary person matters,” she says, “especially when those voices come together.”
That principle extends to what will happen to the works after the exhibition.
Neither artist intends to sell the pieces. Booncherd will give his works to the Thailand Consumers Council for use in its future consumer advocacy, while Jarinee’s portraits will be given to the people whose experiences and faces they record.
In that sense, the works are not simply representations of other people's difficulties. The portraits eventually return to their subjects, while the storyboard drawings continue their lives as part of consumer advocacy.
By bringing these experiences into an art space, “SPEAK UP — Never Surrender” also asks what art can do with problems that statistics and complaints alone may struggle to communicate.
A file containing tens of thousands of grievances records the scale of a problem. A face, a sentence or a hand-drawn scene can make someone stop and look.
And for voices that are easily lost in the noise of the city, being seen may be the beginning of being heard.
Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt, after viewing the exhibition at its opening, summed up the role art can play in that process: “Art is a powerful way to convey the message. Consumer protection needs various ways of communication.
“SPEAK UP — Never Surrender” is on view at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) in Bangkok through August 30, 2026. Admission is free.
