Bangkok's newest museum has become the home of a new annual art commission from CHANEL. Dib Bangkok, the concrete-and-light building conceived by pharmaceutical tycoon Petch Osathanugrah, who died before it was finished, is hosting the first CHANEL Gateway Commission, awarded to Thai artist Nawin Nuthong. His work, Project 147, spreads across six gaming consoles, inviting visitors through a virtual world built from the ancient Thai folk story of Khun Chang Khun Phaen, with sculptural and screen-based imagery that treats exhibition-making itself as the artist's real medium.

The commission sits inside the museum's current exhibition, Giving Life, which runs until 3 May 2027 and pairs Alexander Calder works with pieces by Thai and international artists, including Kei Imazu's Satene's Gate, a farm of fantastical plastic plants and human organs drawn from an Indonesian folk tale, and Tobias Rehberger's spiralling mobiles. Yana Peel, CHANEL's president for arts, culture and heritage, says the commission was developed specifically for Bangkok and its needs, after six years in which the house's support for Thai art centred on performance festivals and shorter projects.

The partnership also throws light on how Bangkok's art world functions. With little structural state support and none of the tax incentives available to patrons in Korea or Singapore, private funding is the vein that keeps the scene going. Dib's founding chairman, Purat Osathanugrah, describes an unplanned cultural renaissance, with art flowering precisely because the market is underdeveloped.

The appetite for art in the city is nevertheless hard to dispute. The Bangkok Art Biennale, which opens its fifth edition towards the end of this year, drew 1.2 million visitors to its 2024 edition, with 303 works across 11 venues. The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre reports around 1.8 million visitors a year. Against that backdrop, the commission is a bet that Bangkok's private patrons, new museums and biennales can together give Thai artists a bigger stage.