Under the See: Coral

Every smoky season I leave Chiang Mai and go south. This is due to what many Chiang Mai residents call ‘smoky season’ – a seasonal pollution event that results in a heavy blanket of smoke over much of South East Asia. I won’t get into why right now – and that’s a post for another time. But the thing to know is that my little mud house has no glass windows and when the smoke comes, there is no sealing it out. The best I could do is head towards the ocean. 

For many years I used to go to Koh Chang, to a small permaculture homestay where I lived and worked as a volunteer; gardening, making art and doing property maintenance. I returned every smoky season for many years, like a migrating bird.  

This is where I met Piak, and we started collaborating on something: The Jungle Museum project.  I completed the Permaculture master plan for the site, and was designing 10 large scale permanent art installations on the theme of endangered species in the Gulf of Thailand. The research was deep and the designs were coming together. It was the kind of project I love. Purposeful, place based, rooted in real ecological context. We named the series Under the See.

I started modelling the Dugong sculpture. A working model, a small version, and showed it at a community event on Koh Chang. I wanted to use discarded fishing nets for the piece, and this quest is how I found the Net Free Seas, a community based circular economy project that cleans the ocean and supplements their income, run by Environmental Justice Foundation. I love how each step of the way this path has connected into another aspect of the systemic issue. Endangered species are directly linked to degraded environments, which lower fish stock and negatively impact fishermen livelihoods. I felt I had a way to combine the artistic and activist parts of myself. 

Then COVID arrived.

I spent four months on the island. The Jungle Museum extinguished almost overnight. All that research, all those designs, just suspended. It was disappointing, and hard to sit with.

But something magical was happening. The tourists were gone and the animals were coming back. I walked the same beach every morning and within weeks I noticed baby rays in the shallows, skimming over my toes. It was so quiet and so extraordinary. Mother nature does not need much from us. Mostly she needs us to step aside. And imagine what could flourish if we actively support it with intention and care. I keep wondering what might be possible.

In 2021 Environmental Justice Foundation invited me to be part of Tangled, a group exhibition at BACC in Bangkok about plastic pollution and the ocean. I built Under the See:Dugong there – placing the viewer on the ocean floor with a mother and baby, surrounded by discarded fishing nets. 

It was at the opening where I met Dr Rahul Mehrotra, Research Director at Aow Thai Marine Ecology Center (ATMEC). 

Rahul has been doing marine conservation work in Thailand since 2012 and he talks about it with an enthusiasm that is genuinely infectious. Our conversation naturally turned towards the potential of an artistic and scientific AR project. At this point ATMEC were already well underway working on a study and scientific paper to provide evidence on what materials best support baby corals best (read more about that study here). 

So, whilst we knew we wanted to do something together, we had yet to find the right shape for it. Life does that sometimes. And like many things in life, they need a little time to sprout into something.

Now a new initiative with ATMEC is properly underway. I finally have the chance to bring together the things I care most about – art, ecosystem regeneration and community empowerment – and to intervene at so many different levels of one issue with real impact. That feels like something worth waiting for.

The Science part: Most reef restoration today is based on cloning – taking fragments of existing corals, propagating them and replanting. It is faster. But the individuals being cloned are genetically old, spawned decades ago in the conditions at that time. But our world has changed dramatically since then, the seas are much warmer and they are struggling. What ATMEC has observed in the field is that genetically new individuals are the ones surviving the bleaching events. But there is no scientific record of that observation. This project will help put it there and (we hope) to redirect how reef restoration is practised and funded.

The Art / Design part: The AR structures designed in close collaboration with ATMEC – built not as decoration but as functional habitat, placed next to healthy reefs to give those new genetic recruits somewhere to land and grow. After the exhibition ATEMC will deploy them in the Gulf of Thailand. 

The Community Blueprint part: My aspiration, and part of the design brief I have given myself, is that the AR designs will be open source. Anyone, anywhere, without specialist equipment or training, will be able to build and deploy them, knowing they are following a method grounded in real evidence. This is limiting, but in a good way. If you know me, you might know I have played with limitations in my personal practice for years. To me, limitations push creativity, and I enjoy rising to the challenge of making this as accessible as possible. I’ll share my full design brief later, for anyone curious to see what I mean.  

A friend of mine once said ‘drinkiing at the fire hydrant with Na’, which was a polite way to say I overwhelmed him by sharing my multi-layered thinking,on what was initially a simple question. This is how my brain works, and I can’t help but see the interconnectedness of things these days, and I understand it can be a lot to hold!

And then there is phase two – the part that is equal parts daunting and exciting. Lifecycle and carbon accounting for the reef structures themselves. What does it actually cost to build these things, financially and environmentally? How do different materials and techniques compare? Cutting edge 3D printed concrete versus DIY salvaged metal? Luckily the science team is responsible for the much more complex carbon accounting of the reef ecology and biodiversity itself. Between us, every angle will be looked at carefully. That kind of systems thinking is what I find most exciting about this collaboration. 

I have been dreaming about this for a long time. The chance to work across disciplines, and co-create something that translates our time and love of nature into careful, intentional action. 

Baby rays in the shallows. A quiet beach. A hope I could not name yet. Now I can. And now it is time to help turn the tide.

The project will have an exhibition at Bangkok 1899 1 – 11th October 2026 in collaboration with ATMEC. We will also have a live discussion on Friday 9th October which is during Bangkok Climate Action Week, please subscribe to get updates!

I am also looking for a gallery or exhibition space in Bangkok to hold an immersive exhibition during 2027. If you know somewhere that might be the right home for it I would love to hear from you.