Like many of her generation in Thailand and Southeast Asia, Parinda Mai grew up with the story Phra Ros Meri (‘12 Sisters’ - นางสิบสอง), communicated to her in various forms from children’s books to TV soap operas and cartoon animations; from local worship sites, Buddhist temples murals, to mountains and caves. It was first and foremost recited to her by her mother. 

Starting from this memory and curiosity, Mai’s ongoing project, 12 Kalpas from Forever to Yours | นิทาน 12 นิรันดร์ (formerly the 12 Kalpas Tale), investigates a speculative relationship between this widely repeated story and her autobiography along with her observations of 21st-century human conditions within popular visual culture—cycles of progress and destruction. 

Since 2019, the project has taken the forms of moving image, interactive installation, digital imagery, sculpture, performance, and collaborations with different collectives, mirroring the many faces that this myth has taken within the sites and psyche of the cultural history of Southeast Asia. 

Through Mai’s ongoing study of evolutionary astrology, this project continues to evolve beyond the framework of this tale and its roots, finding the ruins of our zeitgeist a universally accessible place for a revolution to begin — from within. 

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Parinda Mai (มาย) is an artist-filmmaker born and raised in Thailand. Her art and filmmaking practice often constructs the body as a sensual-sexual microcosmic lens through which the world is observed and revealed, at times marveled at, and at times examined. She privileges haptic visual expression that plunges the viewers into participation with muddy terrains of overlooked, unrecognized, misunderstood, and forbidden energies.

Mai received a B.A. from Princeton University (fully funded by Thailand King’s Scholarship), and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (New Artist Society Scholarship.)  She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2019. Mai has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Chiangmai University.

CV available upon request