The Thailand Biennale 2025 is getting closer, and Phuket is getting ready. This will be the fourth edition of the contemporary art event, but the first time it lands on the island — so organizers have decided to play with Phuket’s most obvious natural asset: the sea.
And not just metaphorically.
One of the most ambitious projects is the Raya Underwater Museum, a labor of love for both art and coral reefs.
When Phuket first began preparing for the Biennale in 2024, officials announced an impressive list of locations that would serve as exhibition venues during the event. It seemed like there was little left to add. But there was one small detail everyone had overlooked: the original list consisted entirely of places on land.
Phuket, meanwhile, has built much of its global reputation on what lies beneath the surface.
Racha Yai is one of the places where thousands of people come every year to take their first tentative steps — or, more accurately, kicks — into the world of diving. The Andaman Sea offers PADI-certified divers a huge menu of dive sites, but Racha Yai is the prologue: the gateway drug to the underwater world.
So it was Racha Yai, where diving is accessible even to beginners, that was given a special role in Thailand Biennale 2025.
The series of cultural events beginning in December will include the opening of an underwater museum off Racha Yai, featuring a group of sculptures inspired by the Vedic epic Ramayana, known in Thailand as the Ramakien.
The ancient Indian mythological text tells the eternal story of good versus evil — in this case, the tale of Rama, prince of Ayodhya and incarnation of the god Vishnu. The epic follows Rama’s exile with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, Sita’s abduction by the demon king Ravana of Lanka, and the prince’s ensuing battle against him.
One figure plays a particularly important role in the story: Hanuman, the fearless warrior, wise adviser and fiercely loyal ally who leads the army of monkeys in the campaign to rescue Sita.
In Thai tradition, Hanuman embodies agility, courage and unwavering devotion to justice. It is hardly a coincidence that his name was given to the Thai police special forces. And it is Hanuman who will be the first figure lowered to the seabed in one of the bays off Racha Yai, becoming the first piece in the exhibition being prepared for Thailand Biennale 2025.
The Exhibition
According to the Biennale organizers, the project will eventually feature five large sculptures from the Conquest of Lanka series, along with more than ten additional artworks contributed by the Phuket Art Association.
Creating the underwater museum is expected to take between two and four years. The planned site will cover one rai — approximately 1,600 square meters — while the project’s initial investment stands at 5 million baht.
The Raya Underwater Museum has two main objectives.
First, it is Phuket’s bid to bring something genuinely unusual to the Biennale: an exhibition that requires visitors to put on a wetsuit rather than simply walk through a gallery door.
Second, it is another chapter in Phuket’s long-running effort to create artificial reefs in its waters.
Man-made reefs help redistribute the pressure caused by tourism and support a marine ecosystem that has taken a beating from the island’s extraordinary success. After all, when thousands of people arrive wanting to see the same underwater paradise, paradise eventually needs a little crowd management.
The earliest artificial reefs were fairly primitive affairs: concrete structures resembling hollow cubes made from intersecting ribs without solid surfaces. Turning them into living parts of the underwater environment took years. Coral, after all, has never been particularly interested in deadlines.
Then SCG began producing shaped concrete structures designed to blend into the underwater landscape almost immediately.
The Ramakien figures represent the next step.
A Brief History of the Genre
The underwater museum off Racha Yai is hardly the first project of its kind. The genre is widely associated with celebrated British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who opened the world’s first underwater sculpture museum off the coast of Grenada in 2006.
That museum, too, was conceived partly as an exercise in reef restoration, following the destruction of local coral ecosystems by a hurricane two years earlier.
So how does it work?
Quite naturally, as it turns out.
At first, the concrete sculptures are simply human-made objects. But over time they become genuine reefs, providing shelter and surfaces for marine life.
Sponges colonize the sculptures, their growth creating something resembling an underwater circulatory system. Gorgonian corals spread across the figures, while sea urchins settle in as permanent residents of the newly developing ecosystem.
The structures create favorable conditions for a wide variety of marine species and can help new fish colonies establish themselves.
In other words, the sculptures gradually stop being sculptures in the conventional sense. They become the scaffolding of an underwater world.
Following the success of his first project, Jason deCaires Taylor continued developing the concept. He has since created five underwater museums around the world, as well as installing sculptures along coastlines in tidal zones.
Thailand has its own, more modest version of the idea in Khao Lak.
The Khao Lak Underwater Learning Park combines artificial underwater structures with a sunken military vessel and specially designed reef installations. The aim is straightforward: take some of the pressure off natural reefs by giving tourists somewhere else to go.
On Phuket, the idea is being taken to another level.
Racha is not simply getting another artificial reef. It is getting a full-scale work of art — an underwater city of sculptures.
The Technology
The material chosen for the sculptures is no accident.
The underwater artworks are being made from environmentally friendly concrete developed by SCG, which has already been tested and approved by Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR).
The concrete has a neutral pH and a porous structure that makes it easier for coral polyps to attach naturally to its surface.
And there is a distinctly 21st-century twist to the ancient epic.
The sculptures are produced using 3D printers, making the manufacturing process largely automated. This not only allows for a high degree of detail and precision, but also significantly speeds up production and installation.
The expectation is that by the time Thailand Biennale 2025 opens, a substantial part of the underwater museum will already be accessible to divers and visitors.
Eternity and Creation
As mentioned above, Thailand Biennale 2025 in Phuket will be the country’s fourth major contemporary art forum, following editions in Krabi in 2018, Nakhon Ratchasima in 2021 and Chiang Rai in 2023.
Phuket will offer its own interpretation of global contemporary art through the lens of eternity — and the possibility of living in harmony with nature rather than simply putting it behind glass.
The official theme of the Biennale is “Niran. Kalpa.”
In Buddhist and Hindu traditions, kalpa refers to an immense unit of cosmic time — a cycle within the endless process of creation and destruction.
Seen from that perspective, art and nature operate according to surprisingly similar rules.
The underwater sculptures begin as objects created by human hands. Over time, however, they become part of the ocean, surrendering themselves to biological processes before eventually being absorbed entirely into the natural environment.
That makes the Raya museum something more interesting than another tourist attraction with an underwater gimmick.
It is a living artwork — one that will change and evolve over time. Coral will grow across its surfaces. Textures and colors will shift. The sculptures will slowly become less distinguishable from the ecosystem around them.
The artwork, in other words, will refuse to stay still.
Perhaps this is Phuket’s attempt to present the world with a different way of thinking about conservation: not nature versus culture, but culture becoming nature.
The Raya Underwater Museum is therefore intended to be more than an exhibition space. It is also a demonstration of an ecological idea — a case study in how contemporary art can become an instrument for restoring and maintaining environmental balance.
And there is something rather beautiful about the concept.
You build a sculpture.
You put it underwater.
Then you wait.
And eventually, the ocean takes over.
Thailand Biennale 2025 will run from November 2025 to April 2026, with more than 60 venues across Phuket province.
The exhibition and its accompanying events are expected to attract more than 5 million tourists to Phuket, although it remains unclear whether that figure refers specifically to Biennale visitors or to the total number of tourists who will encounter the event in one way or another.
The projected economic impact is even more ambitious: more than 40 billion baht generated for the island’s economy.
Not bad for an exhibition where one of the galleries has no walls, no ceiling — and quite a lot of fish.
And not just metaphorically.
One of the most ambitious projects is the Raya Underwater Museum, a labor of love for both art and coral reefs.
When Phuket first began preparing for the Biennale in 2024, officials announced an impressive list of locations that would serve as exhibition venues during the event. It seemed like there was little left to add. But there was one small detail everyone had overlooked: the original list consisted entirely of places on land.
Phuket, meanwhile, has built much of its global reputation on what lies beneath the surface.
Racha Yai is one of the places where thousands of people come every year to take their first tentative steps — or, more accurately, kicks — into the world of diving. The Andaman Sea offers PADI-certified divers a huge menu of dive sites, but Racha Yai is the prologue: the gateway drug to the underwater world.
So it was Racha Yai, where diving is accessible even to beginners, that was given a special role in Thailand Biennale 2025.
The series of cultural events beginning in December will include the opening of an underwater museum off Racha Yai, featuring a group of sculptures inspired by the Vedic epic Ramayana, known in Thailand as the Ramakien.
The ancient Indian mythological text tells the eternal story of good versus evil — in this case, the tale of Rama, prince of Ayodhya and incarnation of the god Vishnu. The epic follows Rama’s exile with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, Sita’s abduction by the demon king Ravana of Lanka, and the prince’s ensuing battle against him.
One figure plays a particularly important role in the story: Hanuman, the fearless warrior, wise adviser and fiercely loyal ally who leads the army of monkeys in the campaign to rescue Sita.
In Thai tradition, Hanuman embodies agility, courage and unwavering devotion to justice. It is hardly a coincidence that his name was given to the Thai police special forces. And it is Hanuman who will be the first figure lowered to the seabed in one of the bays off Racha Yai, becoming the first piece in the exhibition being prepared for Thailand Biennale 2025.
The Exhibition
According to the Biennale organizers, the project will eventually feature five large sculptures from the Conquest of Lanka series, along with more than ten additional artworks contributed by the Phuket Art Association.
Creating the underwater museum is expected to take between two and four years. The planned site will cover one rai — approximately 1,600 square meters — while the project’s initial investment stands at 5 million baht.
The Raya Underwater Museum has two main objectives.
First, it is Phuket’s bid to bring something genuinely unusual to the Biennale: an exhibition that requires visitors to put on a wetsuit rather than simply walk through a gallery door.
Second, it is another chapter in Phuket’s long-running effort to create artificial reefs in its waters.
Man-made reefs help redistribute the pressure caused by tourism and support a marine ecosystem that has taken a beating from the island’s extraordinary success. After all, when thousands of people arrive wanting to see the same underwater paradise, paradise eventually needs a little crowd management.
The earliest artificial reefs were fairly primitive affairs: concrete structures resembling hollow cubes made from intersecting ribs without solid surfaces. Turning them into living parts of the underwater environment took years. Coral, after all, has never been particularly interested in deadlines.
Then SCG began producing shaped concrete structures designed to blend into the underwater landscape almost immediately.
The Ramakien figures represent the next step.
A Brief History of the Genre
The underwater museum off Racha Yai is hardly the first project of its kind. The genre is widely associated with celebrated British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who opened the world’s first underwater sculpture museum off the coast of Grenada in 2006.
That museum, too, was conceived partly as an exercise in reef restoration, following the destruction of local coral ecosystems by a hurricane two years earlier.
So how does it work?
Quite naturally, as it turns out.
At first, the concrete sculptures are simply human-made objects. But over time they become genuine reefs, providing shelter and surfaces for marine life.
Sponges colonize the sculptures, their growth creating something resembling an underwater circulatory system. Gorgonian corals spread across the figures, while sea urchins settle in as permanent residents of the newly developing ecosystem.
The structures create favorable conditions for a wide variety of marine species and can help new fish colonies establish themselves.
In other words, the sculptures gradually stop being sculptures in the conventional sense. They become the scaffolding of an underwater world.
Following the success of his first project, Jason deCaires Taylor continued developing the concept. He has since created five underwater museums around the world, as well as installing sculptures along coastlines in tidal zones.
Thailand has its own, more modest version of the idea in Khao Lak.
The Khao Lak Underwater Learning Park combines artificial underwater structures with a sunken military vessel and specially designed reef installations. The aim is straightforward: take some of the pressure off natural reefs by giving tourists somewhere else to go.
On Phuket, the idea is being taken to another level.
Racha is not simply getting another artificial reef. It is getting a full-scale work of art — an underwater city of sculptures.
The Technology
The material chosen for the sculptures is no accident.
The underwater artworks are being made from environmentally friendly concrete developed by SCG, which has already been tested and approved by Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR).
The concrete has a neutral pH and a porous structure that makes it easier for coral polyps to attach naturally to its surface.
And there is a distinctly 21st-century twist to the ancient epic.
The sculptures are produced using 3D printers, making the manufacturing process largely automated. This not only allows for a high degree of detail and precision, but also significantly speeds up production and installation.
The expectation is that by the time Thailand Biennale 2025 opens, a substantial part of the underwater museum will already be accessible to divers and visitors.
Eternity and Creation
As mentioned above, Thailand Biennale 2025 in Phuket will be the country’s fourth major contemporary art forum, following editions in Krabi in 2018, Nakhon Ratchasima in 2021 and Chiang Rai in 2023.
Phuket will offer its own interpretation of global contemporary art through the lens of eternity — and the possibility of living in harmony with nature rather than simply putting it behind glass.
The official theme of the Biennale is “Niran. Kalpa.”
In Buddhist and Hindu traditions, kalpa refers to an immense unit of cosmic time — a cycle within the endless process of creation and destruction.
Seen from that perspective, art and nature operate according to surprisingly similar rules.
The underwater sculptures begin as objects created by human hands. Over time, however, they become part of the ocean, surrendering themselves to biological processes before eventually being absorbed entirely into the natural environment.
That makes the Raya museum something more interesting than another tourist attraction with an underwater gimmick.
It is a living artwork — one that will change and evolve over time. Coral will grow across its surfaces. Textures and colors will shift. The sculptures will slowly become less distinguishable from the ecosystem around them.
The artwork, in other words, will refuse to stay still.
Perhaps this is Phuket’s attempt to present the world with a different way of thinking about conservation: not nature versus culture, but culture becoming nature.
The Raya Underwater Museum is therefore intended to be more than an exhibition space. It is also a demonstration of an ecological idea — a case study in how contemporary art can become an instrument for restoring and maintaining environmental balance.
And there is something rather beautiful about the concept.
You build a sculpture.
You put it underwater.
Then you wait.
And eventually, the ocean takes over.
Thailand Biennale 2025 will run from November 2025 to April 2026, with more than 60 venues across Phuket province.
The exhibition and its accompanying events are expected to attract more than 5 million tourists to Phuket, although it remains unclear whether that figure refers specifically to Biennale visitors or to the total number of tourists who will encounter the event in one way or another.
The projected economic impact is even more ambitious: more than 40 billion baht generated for the island’s economy.
Not bad for an exhibition where one of the galleries has no walls, no ceiling — and quite a lot of fish.
Phuket Prepares an Underwater Exhibition for Thailand Biennale 2025
Full Immersion
Original text translated by Claude