Apocalyptic Cute Overload - An Interview With Artist Aof Smith
Bangkok-based artist Aof Smith uses dark humor to create playful characters who tell cryptic stories and criticize society, all while looking disarmingly cute. Every piece is a cocktail of violence, punchy colors, cartoon antics, and science fiction. His work is chock full of juxtapositions, exploring concepts of a near-future dystopia with an eerie sense of cuddliness and lovability- things that should be at odds but through Aof’s handiwork go together surprisingly well.
Currently based in Bangkok but with a slew of exhibitions in upcoming months around the world, Aof graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Art from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok in 2009 and a Master of Fine Art from Bangkok’s King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang in 2013. Since his childhood, Aof has been concocting bizarre visual realms with his paintings that have steadily been gaining international attention.
Aof inside his studio
In 2022, Aof held his first U.S based show in LA, featuring his signature surreal worlds composed of strange creatures that are sometimes animalistic, sometimes closer to human beings in their behaviors. His characters interact with a chaotic but eerily familiar environment-one easily reminiscent of our world that grapples with the concerns of climate change and global conflict. Aof says that his work is supposed to highlight his worries about the current world alongside his whimsical visions of the future and the joys of life.
Aof Smith shows the world’s cruelty using a technique of his own translated by vivid colors, detailed facial expressions, and cartoonish but violent characters to drag people’s attention toward the darker sides of humanity [while keeping them dazzled with psychedelic cuteness] and expresses his own criticism of current society.
Sabukaru interviewed Smith at his solo exhibition titled Heritage at Megumi Ogita Gallery. The exhibition displayed 14 paintings using different techniques from 3D computer graphics to airbrushed paintings. Heritage depicts Aof’s vision of a world in the not too distant future, where his cartoons interact with the artifacts that human beings have left behind in their own innocent and thought provoking ways. After his Tokyo exhibition, Aof Smith will have his work displayed in Melbourne starting September 23rd,2023 as well as in Shanghai and Los Angeles starting on November 23rd, 2023.
Hey Aof, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. For those who don't know you, can you introduce yourself to the sabukaru Network?
My name is Aof Smith. I'm from Bangkok, Thailand. I've been an artist for 16 years. I've been a fan of pop-surrealist art since I was a kid. I hope Japanese people can enjoy my work at the exhibit.
Aof in front of the first piece he created for his exhibition Heritage at Toyko’s Megumi Ogita gallery.
You grew up in Thailand, and a lot of your past exhibitions have been based in Thailand as well. What's the environment for young Thai artists today? Is it open to experimentation, or are there a lot of obstacles to creative expression?
From my point of view, Thailand’s art market is expanding. Everything is more open now. There are many galleries, street art pieces, and creative projects. There are auctions, performances, and a bunch of galleries that invite artists to perform from other countries. This makes it easier for the world to see more Thai artists because they are connected with the country's culture but also worldwide art culture.
What kind of things were you obsessed with as a teenager, did those things impact anything that you would be involved in as an artist in your adult years?
I was obsessed with [vintage] fashion, dressing up in thrifted clothing, music, rock, and 90s culture– everything from the 90s is an influence that comes into my work, like the colors or the iconography.
When you were a teenager, I heard that you ventured into making music, is that still very much a part of your life?
Yes, I can play for you if you’d like [laughs]. Now I don’t do performances anymore. I just sing or play guitar for my wife or my family.
There's a lot of growing attention recently in the West focusing on young artists from East Asia, but there's a lot of talent in Southeast Asia that's overlooked! Can you describe the art scene in Bangkok and do you think it’s on the upswing for becoming a hub for creative talent in the region?
10 years ago, the art scene in Thailand was more separated between what was considered “fine art” or “illustration”. My work would probably still be more underground. I’d be doing something more cartoonish, and would have to have a strong identifiable character and be very repetitive to be acknowledged. However, now my drawings or the themes I talk about in my work are more accepted in Thailand’s art market as well as in universities in the region.
These days, lecturers at universities support young [artists] to be more creative, and they select references from Western art or underground art to show their classes. There are more galleries opening branches in Bangkok inviting Filipino and Indonesian artists to come and exchange their art. We see art from other nationalities within our region as well and we feel more connected in general to the global art world. Young Thai artists are more confident to produce what they want to do and to speak their minds. Definitely, compared to the past things are freer now.
How do most young people in Thailand and Bangkok especially experience art? Is it through street art, graffiti, or browsing Instagram?
When I was younger about 10 or almost 20 years ago, if I wanted to do any art research, there was very little social media to help us. So, we had to go to libraries and to bookstores– Kinokuniya [the Japanese bookstore chain] or something like that in Thailand. I would find international books and get references from international artists and everything else from those sources. These bookstores opened up a lot to me, especially the printed magazines that were open to the liberal styles of art. In our university we were only taught about art history, up until the birth of pop art [around the 1950s-60s] and then it was done. So if you wanted to know anything about art beyond that, art students would have to go do their own research. In my time it was very important to have a teacher guide you with this research since it was hard to find this kind of information. Otherwise, people would just follow what was in their textbooks.
Now there's the internet. Two or three years ago, I taught at a university and an artist trainee could come assist me. They would get references only from the internet and nowhere else so I would teach them to go to look at the real paintings in the galleries, find works that they like, put themselves into this environment, and just feel.
Online pictures are not enough compared to seeing work with your own eyes. In Bangkok, we have the Bangkok Arts Cultural Centre in the main city. Also, we have national galleries and private galleries that are more of an art installation where all kinds of work is being exhibited. Young people are exposed to that so now it’s more like a trend to go to galleries/museums as a hobby.
We at sabukaru love pop culture and art in all its forms, are there any pop culture sources that have influenced your art directly?
What influences me the most is maybe Ron English’s art. I’m very interested in his method of painting and the colors he uses. When I was a student, I went deeper into the research of his work, looking at his concepts and what it all meant to the world. It was a Socratic-like learning process, learning about different types of genres from the past as well. His art really added to my sense of freedom in creating art.
An example of Ron English’s popo surrealist work, that has inspired Aof’s artistic practice.
English’s work isn’t afraid to tackle social commentary while using eerie graphics
Japanese pop culture, especially anime and manga, is growing in its influence abroad. Has that influenced Thai youth and artists as well?
Yeah, the cuteness or the detail of Japanese manga cannot be denied, it’s definitely an influence. For all the animations we have, we hardly have in-house animators. We have some, but I would say around 80% of manga or any animations we see apart from Disney are from Japan. All the books that we read, like comic books, are from Japan, but translated into Thai. That's where we get all these inspirations for funny humor or dark humor, from Japanese manga.
Are there any particular manga and anime that are influential right now in Thailand among young artists?
I don’t know about others nowadays but I've been reading Dragon Ball Z for over 30 years.
It was during a time when I was young and growing, and I was hooked so it will always stick and be an influence for me. But right now, there are so many [referring to manga and anime] I don't know about.
Dragon Ball Z the beloved manga and anime by Akira Toriyama
Your current exhibition is called Heritage, what’s the rationale behind the name? Is that a reference to your childhood or something more abstract?
In this exhibition, my work is more abstract. The pieces discuss a hypothetical future world, where what has been left behind by humans is found and reclaimed by the futuristic creatures I’ve created. For example, characters that live in the same world as us but generations after us, what they find left over from our present day is the heritage that we [mankind] have left to them. It’s linked to my own experience that I love to collect old T-shirts or old things from the past.
It’s the idea that whatever was present at that time and created at that time still exists and is still here, but it will live on as time passes. It's not just the good but also the bad. Objects that human beings have created are not going anywhere. Basically, these things we leave behind are just symbols of islands or wars about environmental concerns like plastic usage. In the new world, or in the very far future, these new creatures drawn in my artwork don't know anything about the past. They see trash but they don’t know anything about it so they just keep these things, they enjoy their life while being oblivious to the real meaning behind the things they’ve collected. I feel that the things we do now will definitely impact the future so we have to be considerate about what we are leaving behind. That is the point of the exhibition.
Your art has different levels, it's eye-catching and masterful at first but now there’s also the darkness underneath the cuteness.
Yes, that’s the kind of painting I like to do. I start with an eye-catching cuteness but later on there is more meaning with a little dark humor behind my work. The first piece I made for the show is about feeling like you have multiple personalities, or multiple feelings that feel like chaos inside human beings. We just have one face to show, but have a lot of emotions going on under the surface.
The work in Heritage has a lot of post-apocalyptic elements, is life after the apocalypse a topic you think about often?
I’m not imagining an apocalypse in the near future when I create art, but I draw more of what I actually see in the present world now. Especially in reaction to the actions or habits of human beings, especially in my country [Thailand] and around the world, where people throw rubbish everywhere. This results in floods, for example. These little things are happening now, you don’t need to wait for any apocalypse to happen. It takes a new generation or new people to get in there and create a huge impact and change old mindsets of littering or throwing trash everywhere. I just collect and present topics that touch the heart and the mind and cause us to reflect on our actions.
Building off of that, technology and “the apocalypse” are two things that are touched upon in your work, how do you think AI is going to impact the new generation of artists? Do you think it’s a serious threat or a useful tool?
As for AI coming into the art world... I would be grateful to see what it will be able to bring. Things will be more diverse with AI creating artwork but for myself, I will just focus on my own things, it really does not affect me either way. However, I still believe AI will need to be programmed further and will definitely be different from the work of human artists. AI will have to be programmed to do “perfect” art. But as a human being or as an artist, to be able to do things from the heart, to express things we feel at the time, these are things AI cannot do. AI does not have the heart that humans have. Humans can still do things in the world that AI cannot.
Looking at previous interviews and art statements, you said that the cruelty of everyday life is overlooked by our obsession with fantasy, do you create art as a sense of escape or to bring up things that you find problematic in the world today?
Most of my work takes inspiration from actual experiences from my youth or from the past, so I create pieces to have people acknowledge these feelings. It's not an escape. Right now I’m in a very peaceful place. I just create work that captures my past experiences with the world, and hopefully people viewing my art may be able to relate to them.
What are some of your next moves? What are you excited about in the future? What are some upcoming projects?
I’m going to continue to make new work! I’m excited about the next coming exhibition in November in LA! It’s new work but still linked with the same concept of Heritage.
Interview by Ora Margolis
Words by Marius Grandin
Translation by Sebastian Paez
Photography by Stefania Lehman
