La Inthonkaew

La was born in a small village bordering the jungle in central Thailand in 1980 or 1981. She is Thai, but some of her ancestors also came from Burma, Laos and China. Her father was a local shaman; her uncle was a locally venerated Buddhist monk famous for his miraculous powers; the women in her family were traditionally midwives.

She went to school for only four years, commuting from the family farm to the center of the village on the back of her favorite water buffalo - and almost always escaped before the end of her classes by jumping out of a classroom window, because she was bored. After the premature death of her father, the family disintegrated and, at the age of eleven, La found herself alone with two small brothers to take care of. She had to become a hunter and gatherer in order to survive for the next two years.

Later, La went through a number of menial jobs working e.g. as a construction laborer, cook, cleaning lady, masseuse and a beach parasol lender.

A mother of three, La gave birth to her first child when she was fifteen, and at the age of 33 she was already the grandmother of twins. While visiting with her family in Phuket in 2004, she was swept up by the tsunami, which 

came close to killing her. At the same time, however, this traumatic experience fully opened the doors of her pictorial imagination.

La started painting at a very early age while she was still living in the Thai countryside, 

painting on any scrap of paper that she could lay her hands on with paints that she herself prepared using mud and flowers. 

2010

In 2018, a shared exhibition in Příkazy u Olomouce placed her paintings with those of Iva Folajtárová. Also in 2018, her paintings were included in the collective exhibition of art owned by Pavel Konečný in Luhačovice, Czech Republic. In 2019, three solo exhibitions took place: in Artinbox gallery at the turn of May/June, in Bastion gallery in Tábor in July and in Artmaterial.cz gallery in Děčín in August. And in October 2019, her paintings were again included in the exhibition of Pavel Konečný’s collection, this time in Přerov. Recently, articles about her paintings appeared in Czech magazines Analogon No. 83 (III/2017), Tvar No. 1/2018, Revolver Revue No. 110, Xantypa No. 7-8/2018 and Analogon No. 88 (II/2019).

In 2020, Manuel Anceau gave a lecture on La’s paintings as part of a series organized by Mrs. Lise Maurer at the Institut Protestant de Théologie in Paris, and in the same year Pavel Konečný additionally published a comprehensive selection of her drawings in his “Marginalie” edition.

In 2021, Revolver Revue published Ondřej Sekanina's book: “The Shamanic Rosary,” inspired by La’s stories about her childhood spent in the Thai countryside and which was illustrated by her paintings.

La’swork is included in a number of Czech, French and Polish private collections, including two of the most important Polish collections – those of Andrzej Kwasiborski and Leszek Macak. Also, in 2022, the Silesian Museum in Katowice purchased a large number of her works.

Ondřej Sekanina, 2023

2018 - joint exhibition with Iva Folajtárová at the Folk Art Museum in Příkazy near Olomouc, Czech Republic

2018 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collection of Pavel Konečný in Luhačovice, Czech Republic

2019 - solo exhibition “Sun with Cubs” at the Artinbox Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic

2019 - solo exhibition “My Father Was a Shaman” at the Bastion Gallery in Tábor, Czech Republic

2019 - solo exhibition “Buddhas, Fish and Mermaids” at the Artmaterial Gallery in Děčín, Czech Republic

2019 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collection of Pavel Konečný at the Pasáž Gallery in Přerov, Czech Republic

2021 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collections of Pavel Konečný and Andrzej Kwasiborski at the Dom Darmstadt Center in Plock near Warsaw, Poland

2022 - participation in the collective exhibition “Trouvé sur le bord” from the collection of Pavel Konečný at the Czech Center in Paris

2022 - participation in a collective exhibition from the collections of Pavel Konečný and Andrzej Kwasiborsky in the exhibition space of Česká spořitelna in Brno, Czech Republic

2022 - participation in the collective exhibition “Sztuka w coronie” at the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland

2023 - solo exhibition “Rabbit on Wheels” at the Art Brut Prague Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic

2023 - joint exhibition with Kasia Mielcarek at Stacja Badawcza - Outsider Art Gallery in Krakow, Poland

2023 - participation in the collective exhibition “Pierwiastek żeński” at the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland

2023 - solo exhibition “La – Daughter of the Sun” at the Art Brut Gallery in Lublin, Poland