Thongkun Phosalit (Mai) delivers charcoal for a living. The 70 year-old makes about 175 baht a day, barely enough to scrape by. He shares a 20 square metre makeshift living quarter with six family members. Early mornings followed by long days of manual labour on repeat, one day off work means no income.
Mai’s life is a classic example of many caught in Thailand’s labyrinth of poverty - the theme which resonates through the exhibition ‘Equal or artificial? The journey of inequality, the city’s poor’.
Walking through the photo gallery along the spiral hallway of the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre, the walls are lined with pictures of people like Mai, each frame encapsulates a story of life in poverty.
There is a portrait of a lady which stares at the audience, her eyes brimmed with tears. In another frame next to her, a man is pushing a cart in scorching sun.
“Poverty is not an isolated problem but it is trapped under a layer of structural issues like access to land, secure living environment, employment benefits, education, and healthcare”, said Nattaya Waewweerakoupt, Director of Social Agenda and Public Policy Communication Centre at Thai PBS.
The joint exhibition by Thai PBS and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation builds on at least five years of information gathering.
While the numbers show that it costs 3 million baht to raise a child through compulsory education in Thailand, the government only subsidises 1.46 million baht. There are close to one million school-aged children who are forced to drop out of the education system because of poverty.
For working-age adults, over a quarter of a million leave their hometown each year to find work in the city, many do not have health insurance.
For senior citizens, at least 20 percent of them are living under 100 baht a day. Meanwhile, the average income for the age group is between 87 to 167 baht per day.
The end of the photo gallery leads onto an object installation space. The collection features a street food cart, a wheelbarrow, a lottery panel, mosquito nets, cardboard boxes, and other tools of the trade that help the poor earn a living. Together, they represent ‘birth-education-employment-illness-declining years-death’ loop against the backdrop of privation.
The exhibition concludes with the display which tracks governments efforts to alleviate the problem during the past decade.
According to the ‘Poverty, Prosperity and Planet Report 2024’ by the World Bank Group, “By the end of this decade, a projected 7.3 percent of the world population will be living in extreme poverty —more than double the World Bank global goal of 3 percent and even further away from the Sustainable Development Goal of ending extreme poverty in all countries by 2030.”
Poverty is a global issue and Thailand has a fair share of it. The exhibition; ‘Equal or artificial? The journey of inequality, the city’s poor’ offers a glimpse into the experiences of those on the breadline in Bangkok.
Dates: 15-27 July 2025
Entry: Free
Hours: 10:00am to 8:00pm (Tuesday to Sunday)
Where: Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre (BACC)
BTS station: National Stadium
