My Mother was a Nun II, was painted from photograph portrait of Phaptawan’s mother on the piece of hemp Phaptawan had put in the luggage when she first moved to Sydney in 1996. To her, the narrow edge of the long piece hemp identified with limited and rigid space my mother would have been in. Phaptawan cut the long piece in half and painted her mother’s portrait with slightly adjusted position, one looking at the other. As an artist, Phaptawan presents an under-explored lacunae within the narrative of Thai art history, as an individual who has accrued extensive experience through the informal apprenticeship under her father, the mural painter Paiboon Suwannakudt, from 1969 to 1981. Phaptawan has in fact overcome many hurdles as an outlier, a female mural painter surrounded by male peers and monks; she looked past the restrictions and taboos against normal interactions between her and monks due to gender.
