Ponnapa Prakkamakul
Artist Statement
As a painter and a landscape architect, site investigation and immersion play an important role in my work. I explore new places using the painting process as a tool to experience, understand, and form connections with my surroundings. My mixed media painting reflects my immersive experience engaging with the landscape through the performative acts of searching, studying, and collecting natural materials to paint with, as well as sketching in situ. In the studio, the collected materials such as soil, plant, groundwater, and rust from found objects are applied on paper as the painting medium depicting the landscape scenes where they were assembled from. This painting method not only creates a connection between me and the site but also fosters a deeper connection to new places as an immigrant – through art I cultivate my sense of place in this new land.
Artist Bio
Ponnapa Prakkamakul is a Thai contemporary visual artist and a landscape architect who uses the painting process as a tool to experience, understand, and connect with her surrounding environment. Through her work, she aims to gain a better understanding of cultural displacement and isolation issues as an immigrant. Ponnapa holds a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design where she received Lowthorpe Fellowship Award upon graduation. She is also a recipient of David Bethuel Jamieson Artist of Color Residency & Fellowship at C-Scape Dune Shack in Provincetown, Residence Lab's artist-in-residence program at ACDC and the Pao Arts Center in Boston, and Manoog Family Artist Residency program at the Plumbing Museum in Watertown with four paintings in the museum's permanent collection. Her work has also been exhibited, published, and collected throughout the US and in Asia. Ponnapa currently lives and works in Massachusetts.
Local Artists Keep the Spirit of Boston's Chinatown Alive
WEBN Boston, Nov. 29, 2021
Exhibitions :
Boundaries/Borders: A Member's Group Exhibition, March 2-27, 2022
Space Between, June 30-July 25, 2021
Troubled Landscapes, group show on Artsy, June 1-30, 2021
Samatha: Stillness in the Chaos, June 2-27, 2021
Repeat As Needed, July 29-August 23, 2020
Troubled Landscapes, a group show on Artsy, June 1-30, 2020
Transformations, group show on Artsy, May 28-June 18, 2020
Press + Media:
Boundaries/Borders: A Member's Group Exhibition, Press Release, March 12, 2022
Samatha: Stillness in the Chaos, Press Release, April 6, 2021
Newbery, Emma. "Repeat As Needed," Kingston Gallery Blog, August 9, 2020
Witcomb, Robert. "We Need Even More This Year," New England Diary, July 12, 2020
Contact + Links