Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (b. 1957, Trad, Thailand) is a multidisciplinary artist working across printmaking, sculpture, installation, video, photography, performance, writing, and pedagogical interventions. She is one of Southeast Asia’s most respected contemporary practitioners.

Araya has also played a major role innovating arts education in Thailand, where she established the country’s first interdisciplinary art school curricula. At her home and studio in Chiang Mai, she cares for dozens of stray dogs, who often appear in her artworks.

After earning both a BFA and an MFA in graphic arts from Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook continued her studies in Germany at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, receiving a diploma in 1990 and an MA in 1994. Around 1998, after early experiments with intaglio printmaking and sculptural installation, Rasdjarmrearnsook began to concentrate on film and video. Her work is an articulation of personal loss and the movement between life and death, approached in a way that challenges viewers’ moral sense and tolerance through complex and provocative imagery.

Working with psychologically rich materials, Rasdjarmrearnsook considers a wide range of subjects that have existed in marginal spaces, including women, the deceased, the insane, and animals. She creates complex narratives that confront societal structures of power and pedagogy. Concerned with systems of language and communication, Rasdjarmrearnsook makes earnest attempts to converse with subjects who don't speak in languages that are comprehended by or even acknowledged by mainstream society.

She has been exhibiting internationally for 45 years, including at documenta, the Carnegie International, and biennales in Venice, Johannesburg, Sydney, Istanbul, Bangkok, Jakarta, Gwangju, Singapore, and beyond. Rasdjarmrearnsook’s work has been installed in solo presentations at international institutions including the National Gallery, Bangkok (1987, 1992, 1994, 1995, and 2002); Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2003); Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2012); Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (2012); 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2014); SculptureCenter, New York (2015); and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai (2025).

Her works are held in collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; M+, Hong Kong; and major museums in Singapore, Australia, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand, and beyond.