Ampannee Satoh

Ampanee Satoh is one of very few Thai female photographers to explore issues of cultural repression, migration and social unrest in her homeland of Patani in the southern part of Thailand.

Her 2016 and 2018 exhibition ‘Lost Motherland’, reflects a little of the hardships faced by the Muslim-majority population in Patani. More specifically, it hints at the cultural repression imposed by an ultra-nationalist ideology. It took Ampannee two years to put together this moving solo exhibition held at the A+ Works of Art Gallery in June, 2018.

Ampannee’s solo exhibition ‘Burqa’ at the Kathmandu Photo Gallery Bangkok in 2011 was another riveting project inspired by the lives of contemporary Muslim women in European countries like France, where a ban of full-length veils took place in 2010.

She’s participated in numerous group exhibitions in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Turkey, and Singapore, with a few solo exhibitions in between.

Her time studying photography at L’École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in France shaped her artistic focus considerably, as did the growing unrest back at home. Now, as a Photography lecturer at Rangsit University in Thailand, she remains undeterred in her mission to represent the issues close to her heart.