Pretend to be a biker again WHEN PAINTING IS MORE THAN JUST PAINTING, BUT A CONVERSATION WITH A SELF ONCE LEFT BEHIND, ‘PEDRO TEACH ME HOW TO PAINT’ BY ANCHALEE ANANTAWAT IS NOT JUST AN EXHIBITION, BUT A SPACE WHERE SHE CAN REDISCOVER HER PAST SELF
TEXT: SARUNKORN ARTHAN
PHOTO COURTESY OF TARS UNLIMITED EXCEPT AS NOTED
(For Thai, press here)
It is often said that the people we love always leave an imprint on us. Not by controlling or compelling us, but by gently guiding us toward one direction or another. In psychology, this is known as the ‘Michelangelo phenomenon,’ a process in which the beloved becomes much like a sculptor, gradually chipping away at our outer layers to reveal our true selves within, allowing them to develop and grow closer to the ‘best’ version of who we might ideally become.
I think we forgot the stove, Something like a cycle
Such was the role of Pedro Hernandez, the Taiwanese-Mexican partner of Unchalee (Leee) Anantawat, who once filled her heart with love and encouraged her to create paintings, before eventually leaving for a distant place, only to return to her life not long ago. Pedro’s reappearance became the spark for Unchalee to bring together both old and new works she had created with him for Pedro Teach Me How to Paint, an exhibition presented across the two adjoining shophouse units of TARS Unlimited in Bangkok’s Song Wat quarter. In its own way, the presentation seems to commemorate him, or perhaps to quietly celebrate his presence.
Photo: Sarunkorn Arthan
Photo: Sarunkorn Arthan
Photo: Sarunkorn Arthan
Although every work by Unchalee is animated by vivid colour, those bright surfaces stand in stark contrast to the traces that remain within the building itself. This contrast evokes a strange sense of melancholy, loneliness, and sadness, as though fragments of love, or something close to it, still linger both in the physical world and the realm of memory. It also reaffirms the impression that someone was once here, and that perhaps, one day, he may return to witness how she has grown, and how far she has come.
Meeting at the big shell between two palm trees
Unchalee’s works lead us to believe that the two were deeply in love from the very beginning, from the moment that first brought Unchalee and Pedro together. A still life of sheer, seductive underwear; a portrait of Unchalee on a sleek motorcycle; and even an image of Pedro’s body, revealing his masculine build and defined muscles, all seem to testify to that affection. Yet amid these seemingly unmistakable traces of affection, no one knows, not even the writer at first, that Pedro Hernandez, this Taiwanese-Mexican man, is in fact a fictional character whom Unchalee has fashioned from fragments of herself.
Unchalee and Pedro
If approached through a psychoanalytic lens, this realization opens onto a more intriguing question: who, after all, is ‘Pedro Hernandez’?
Looking more closely at Unchalee’s life, one finds that she completed her undergraduate degree in graphic design before moving on to a master’s degree in animation, a discipline built on control, frame by frame, second by second. This stands in sharp contrast to the world of painting, where intuition and release are allowed to take over. Is it possible, then, that throughout the years she spent working in animation, the identity of the ‘painter’ had been repressed all along, buried within the subconscious?
Baby, it_s gonna be hot, Huihui learn how to make fire
Pedro Hernandez is my love
Pedro Hernandez, then, is not a mysterious young man from a distant land. He is an avatar of Unchalee herself, a self she has split away from in order to enter into conversation with her own past and present through the language of painting: the first love she once left behind in order to journey into the world of animation.
The sentence so openly declared in the exhibition title, Pedro teach me how to paint, may be read as a candid admission that Pedro, the avatar born of painting, is the one who came to teach me how to paint. These raw, immediate canvases, marked by charged gestures of spray paint, are therefore the result of Unchalee allowing the subconscious to step forward and take her by the hand, guiding the process entirely, without the need for structure, method, or control any longer.
Night sea
In the end, all of us reach moments when we are forced to grow up, to put on the mask of reason, and to fold away a ‘first love’ or a ‘childhood dream’ somewhere deep in the recesses of the subconscious in order to make a pact with reality. We discipline ourselves so rigorously that we forget how happy, and how free, we once were when we allowed ourselves to remain faithful to our own instinct. To visit Unchalee’s exhibition is to be gently prompted to turn back toward the fragile places within ourselves.
Who is your ‘Pedro Hernandez’?
Pedro teach me how to paint is on view at TARS Unlimited from May 1 to June 7, 2026.