Spray cans & soul cycles: Inside Bangkok’s street art scene now
Meet two artistsgiving their insights behind the city’s colourful urban masterpieces
The Thaiger key takeaways
- Bangkok’s street art has exploded beyond galleries, covering canals, walls, train pillars, and even helmets, blending local culture with global influences.
- Artists like TU!! and Chip7 bring personal style and philosophy to the streets, balancing playfulness, legacy, and creative freedom.
- Key spots for exploring street art include Khlong Saen Saeb, Graffiti Park near MBK, and hidden murals across the city, always evolving and always interactive.
Bangkok’s art scene used to hide in galleries and temple murals; now it blares from canal walls, train pillars, the streets, and the back of a Grab driver’s helmet. The city’s visual culture has jumped the curb. Graffiti, illustration, toys, tattoos, music videos, you name it. It’s not a matter of “Is Bangkok into street art?” but “Which neighbourhood didn’t repaint since อาหารเช้า (breakfast)?”
I talked with two artists who’ve been shaping and reading the city’s walls: TU!! (Nutshapon Tusangiam), a Bangkok-based visual artist whose work fuses child-energy with street culture, and Chip7, a New York/New Jersey-raised writer/rapper who’s lived in Bangkok for 14 years and maps its graffiti like a local archaeologist with better taste.
On this page
| Section (Click to jump) | Short Summary |
|---|---|
| Tu!! | Tu!! combines childlike curiosity with street culture, creating playful yet philosophical art across multiple mediums, including murals, tattoos, and collectibles. |
| Chip7 | Chip7 brings NYC/Jersey roots and hip-hop DNA to Bangkok, blending Thai motifs with street graffiti and fostering a local mural culture along the canals. |
| If you’re coming to Bangkok for the street art | Visitors can explore Khlong Saen Saeb, Graffiti Park, and canal murals to experience Bangkok’s unique street art scene, combining mythology, modernity, and interactive creativity. |
Tu!!: Childlike lens, street nerves and grown-up discipline
If you’ve seen candy-colored characters dancing across brick or canvas, there’s a chance it’s Tu!!. His manifesto is simple: keep the child’s soul intact, reckless curiosity, joy, risk and channel it through street culture (he’s a b-boy, so the stance is earned). The work reads playful, but the engine in it is philosophical.
Key points:
On medium sprawl: painting, murals, collectables, apparel, even tattooing on (and off) fake skin, he rotates mediums the way Bangkok rotates seasons: suddenly and with humidity. “If I paint for a month straight, I get bored,” he says. Then it’s graffiti. Then a tattoo. Then back again. The point isn’t novelty; it’s staying awake.
On hype vs. legacy: Bangkok’s market is hot enough to toast a bao. That’s good for rent, dangerous for meaning. Tu!! worries about “fast art” collecting names, not ideas. He asks buyers why they like a piece; if the answer is thoughtful, he feels loved. If it’s fuzzy, he still smiles, but makes a mental note. His north star is a Thai phrase roughly meaning art should leave something for the world. Pretty is fine. Residue is better.
On the split personality every modern artist needs: He’ll collaborate with big brands, but only if he can keep his style. When a major client waved a fat check to paint their licensed character without his touch, he passed. “If I don’t feel comfortable in the future working with them, I won’t do it.” It’s not anti-commerce; it’s pro-continuity. He’ll market; he won’t muffle.
On heartbreak and cycles: His recent show looped “paint” and “pain” into one wordplay, because life does the same. The work orbits Buddhist cycles: joy, loss, joy again. He’s not pretending to float above it; he’s learning in public, then leaving the lesson on a wall.
Interview
Interviewer: “So how would you describe your style?”
Tu!!: “ I’m colourful, I’m still childish even though I’m 30, but the concept of my life is to maintain that childish soul in me because you know when we were all children, we were reckless. We are careless, but we have fun. We have joy. We are willing to do anything; we risk it all. Perceptions I still want to keep in me. I’m a b-boy. So I like street culture, like break dancing, So I like that Street culture aesthetic. So I take the childish and the street and I mix them all together to become my style.”
Interviewer: “How would you describe this street art scene in Bangkok?
Tu!!: “Oh, it’s getting bigger. It’s getting you know, more recognised than ever before, like let’s say if you compare it to five or ten years ago, if you spray on the streets people would think that you are, you know, disturbing the neighbours. Even if you do it legally or illegally, people don’t like it so much. Now! They are accepting, they are now more curious than ever. They will stand by while you are working and ask ‘What are you guys doing?’ ‘Oh! That’s so cool!’ You know, this perception has changed if you compare it to five/ten years ago, so it’s crazy.”
Interviewer: “ How did you get your following?”
Tu!!: “Probably started with the NFTs. I think basically I got known from that. I think I was like one of ten Thai artists that made the NFT that sold over 150 K a piece, which at first I thought was boring digital work but because of that, you know, the era where people get like so interested about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency and then but I jumped there during that period.”
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Also: Master of Fine Arts in motion: Thailand’s oldest art school reinvents the future
Chip7: Canal lines, micro-scenes, and hip-hop DNA
Chip7’s story is a postcard from both coasts: born in NYC, raised in Jersey, half-Thai, and in love with Bangkok since the ’90s. He writes letters (graffiti), writes lyrics (rap), and reads cities like mixtapes.
Key points:
Bangkok’s friendliness hooked him early. In ’95, fresh out of high school and new to graff, Thai writers took him around, showed him spots, and introduced him to scenes. The city was big, but the network felt small. Macro city, micro family, and it still does.
Thai influences, for real: You’ll see Ramakien characters like yaksha giants, simian warriors, spliced with hip-hop B-boys and skate kids. It’s not kitsch; it’s vernacular. Bangkok’s walls speak traditional and global at the same time.
On taste and legibility: The “is this art?” debate still lives even under every overpass. Some folks can’t read letterforms, so they tilt toward characters or pop icons. Chip7 leans into that sometimes, twisting familiar figures with his hand style; nostalgia opens wallets and walls.
On the music side: He’s watched Thailand’s rap scene swell with more rappers than ever, more sub-genres, more festivals. The paradox: easiest time to make music, hardest time to make anyone care. Everyone has editing apps; not everyone has attention. His advice to artists is dad-simple and correct: show your work, control your narrative, take baby steps, keep going. Mistakes often become open doors later.
Interview
Interviewer: “So what is the graffiti scene like in Bangkok?”
Chip7: “ I think with the graffiti scene in Thailand now, it’s quite strong. I went to an event called Wall Lords, and I was very impressed by all the newer writers, and it’s one of those things where, like with hip-hop, also, you have people that were around from 1995 that are still in the scene now. And even though Bangkok’s such a huge city, it’s kind of small too, because somebody went to college with this guy, or somebody knows this guy, it’s actually quite small, even though it’s a big city, and graffiti is even like a crazy microcosm of that.”
Interviewer: “If someone were to come here, and they know nothing of Bangkok, what would you suggest they go see?”
Chip7: “I like that’s off the beaten path is all the graffiti on Klongsangsaab, the canal that connects the whole city. It goes from the mall, Mongkapi, all the way to Bang Mong Po near Khao San Road. It’s kind of a continuous mural; there’s so much different work there, I really love that. and just the landscape too, because there’s stuff there that looks like it could still be from the 80s, and then there’s super modern stuff too.
Interviewer: “If you were an up-and-coming street artist in Bangkok, what advice would you give that person?”
Chip7: “I would say just to try to show your work and control your own narrative. Show your work and then also I always tell artists to look at things as baby steps, because sometimes when you make mistakes, it could turn into an opportunity later on. And also, just like with everything, you have to just keep going strong. That’s the main thing.”
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If you’re coming to Bangkok for the street art
- Ride the Khlong Saen Saeb boat and look left/right like a kid on a sugar drip.
- Swing by Graffiti Park near MBK to watch pieces of Bangkok’s street art get born and buffed in real time.
- When you see a character that looks like a temple mural’s anime character wearing sneakers, you’re not hallucinating; that’s Bangkok doing Bangkok.
- If you meet an artist, ask why they made the piece. They’ll either light up or shrug; both answers may teach you something.
Bangkok isn’t trying to be Berlin or Bushwick. It’s a city where mythology shares a wall with manga, where a rapper explains jazz samples over noodles, where an artist rejects a giant paycheck to keep a tiny signature curve. The work is playful, the stakes are adult, and the paint still dries fast in this heat.
Bring water, bring respect, and come back again, because by tomorrow, the walls won’t be the same.
Also: By the river’s edge: Life along Bangkok’s khlongs
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