A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage)

• By Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• In collaboration with Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid
• Year 2025
• First exhibited Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, 14 August 2025 – 16 February 2026
• Curated by Jane Devery

This work is a revised version of A Conversation with the Sun, first exhibited at Bangkok CityCity Gallery in 2022. In that earlier version a large white fabric, resembling a ghostly movie screen, drifted through the space in a trance, like a slow-moving tsunami. At one end of the wall, two video images were projected over each other: fragments from the artist’s video diaries gathered over a decade. As the fabric passed in front of the projectors, it caught the light and cast shadows of waves, mountains and memories.

The work explores the nature of projection and perception. Surfaces shift and meanings transform. The projectors serve as both light sources and vehicles of memory, evoking sunlight, cinema and the passage of time.

Apichatpong’s practice goes beyond filmmaking. He has long experimented with the physical elements behind cinema (backdrops, lighting, projectors) through installations and performances. He has animated traditional Thai performance backdrops, made beams of light interact with smoke suspended in the air, and turned projections toward the audience, inviting them into the experience.

This Afterimage version, created for the MCA, brings in longtime collaborators Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid. Their additional projection adds a new reflection, responding to the spirit of the original work. The fabric has expanded, and cinema chairs now occupy the space. Real and virtual shadows interact in a choreography that brings the performative dimension to the fore.

A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage) is a meditation on light, urging us to observe the impermanence of images as they shift, dissolve and reappear.

Installation views: A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage), Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration with Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid, 2025, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney. Images courtesy and © Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid. Photographs by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.