Reforestation can be art as well as science. One of Thailand’s leading philanthropists has opened an “art forest” on degraded land in Thailand’s oldest national park featuring works by renowned Thai and international creators with the goal to “heal the land through art.”

The installation and project are the work of Marisa Chearavanont, a member of the family that owns CP Group, the Kingdom’s largest agro-industrial conglomerate. She serves on the Asia-Pacific Acquisition Committee for Tate Modern in London and the International Leadership Council for the New Museum in New York City.

Marisa’s philanthropy gained attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when helped found Chef Cares, which enlisted 70 chefs, some with Michelin starred restaurants, to prepare and deliver meals to frontline medical workers, transit staff, and communities in need.

The pandemic also led to her being locked down at her home near Khao Yai National Park in central Thailand. With little else to do, she found herself taking long walks in the forest and feeling rejuvenated by nature.

“All of us need a kind of healing. I wanted art to be part of this healing medium for us,” she told the ArtNews website. To entice more people to share her experience, she combined her passion for art with her newfound love of nature.

Marisa enlisted Thai and international artists to design works for an Art Forest, which she gained permission to create on degraded land within the park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

She said she sees Khao Yai Art Forest as a kind of reforestation project. “I would like to heal the land through art. I told the artists, ‘Please create art about the healing, love, care, positiveness, so whoever come to this land can absorb it and leave with positiveness.’ This is a new paradigm,” she said.

According to ArtNews, she invited a number of international artists to create site-specific works using materials found in the forest, from rocks to mud and water.

Among the first four commissioned works are Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog Forest; Italian artist Francesco Arena’s GOD, a sculpture made of two large stones; Thai artist Ubatsat’s Pilgrimage to Eternity, an earth-based work using soil and water from the grounds; and K-BAR by Danish duo Elmgreen & Dragset that is a permanent six-seat pavilion-cum-bar dedicated to German artist Martin Kippenberger.

She is also acquiring existing works, including a Louise Bourgeois spider sculpture, Mamam (1999–2002); Richard Long’s stone circle installation, Madrid Circle (1988); a series of wooden sculptures, Nouns Slipping into Verbs, by Richard Nonas; and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s “Two Planets” series of videos of people reacting to reproductions of European masterworks installed in nature.

Marisa wants the Art Forest to grow even larger in coming years, but she isn’t setting any firm timetables. Like nature’s forest, she said, she wants the Art Forest to grow organically.

Photo courtesy of https://www.artnews.com/