Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok is proud to present the newest solo show by Skirua, the exhibition title is “SKIRUA’S Hell of Love”, a concept key to interpreting all the most recent works realized by the artist.

In SKIRUA’s work, reality and the virtual do not oppose one another; rather, they dissolve into each other until they become indistinguishable. Prolonged immersion in digital environments produces a perceptual shift in which the boundary between lived experience and imagined construction becomes porous. Within this space, interiority is no longer separate from the world, but is constantly externalized: what the subconscious generates takes form and becomes reality.

This process lies at the core of the artist’s research. Already in earlier projects, from Future Paradise to Abyssal Enchantress’s Box, a fluid subjectivity emerges, where identity, memory, and emotion operate as an open system. Recurring figures: dolls, enchantresses, and hybrid creatures are not characters but fragments of the self, projections of an identity in continuous formation. This imagination is rooted in otaku culture and in new forms of digital affectivity, where emotional attachment may develop toward fictional entities rather than real individuals. In such contexts, love is not grounded in reciprocity, but in projection, identification, and imaginative continuity.

For Skirua, love is not contingent but necessary to existence. It functions as an internal generative force, a condition for living itself. This takes shape in a relationship that began in adolescence with an anime character and has extended for over eight years. What initially emerged as an attraction gradually became a process of deep internalization, dissolving the boundary between self and other: the beloved is no longer external, but incorporated.

This relationship has profoundly shaped the artist’s identity, transforming her from a disciplined and reserved individual into a more expressive and extreme subjectivity. Love acts here as a force of self-transformation. At the same time, identity becomes unstable, oscillating between self and other, suggesting a form of fusion. A similar ambivalence characterizes her relationship with her own creations, dolls and paintings, which function as emotionally charged presences. They evoke love, tenderness, and devotion, but also destructive impulses and a desire for annihilation. Love is sustained through fantasy, understood as an operative space in which the relationship extends beyond reality, unfolding across multiple worlds and temporalities. This relationship also takes concrete form: the artist collects objects related to the character, creates dolls in her likeness, and has staged a symbolic wedding in real life. A full-back tattoo further inscribes this bond. Here, pain and ecstasy coexist as inseparable elements of love. Love becomes a closed yet expanding system in which imagination, identification, and incorporation coincide, an experience where living, loving, and creating are indistinguishable.

Across these works, love is not stable or reciprocal, but unfolds as a shifting structure that encompasses devotion, violence, care, loss, and reconstruction. It operates across multiple worlds and identities, continuously redefining the boundaries between self and other, reality and imagination.

Venue
Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok, Room 201 – 206, River City Bangkok, 23 Soi Charoenkrung 24, Talad Noi, Sampantawong, Bangkok, 10100

Artists
Skirua

Exhibition Dates
25 April – 31 May 2026

Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PM

Website
https://www.tangcontemporary.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/tangcontemporaryartbangkok/

Contact
bkk@tangcontemporary.com

About the Artist

Skirua
b. 2003

Her artistic practice encompasses painting, installation, and film, with a focus on the cultural shifts and conflicts inspired by the internet, social media, and other products of the information age. In particular, she is interested in how the generation born after the year 2000 understand and envision life, the future, and popular culture.

SKIRUA is a contradiction between reality, society, internet, and fantasy. “SKIRUA” is the name of Guo Yuheng’s imaginary self, who travels through the timeline to become a mimic of different social phenomena, anime characters with different identities, and finally gets lost in herself.

“The internet changed me.” Skirua is part of a new generation that grew up alongside the rise of the internet and social media. She was just 17 when she held her first solo exhibition, teaching herself to paint through online video tutorials on her iPad. But the internet was more than just an educational tool—it revealed a new world of fantasy, where her various avatars could create intimate connections with others. Her multi- faceted self-portrait is an ode to these myriad identities that exist both online and offline.

Guo Yu Heng has always aspired to become a fictional character, fall in love with a fictional anime character, get married to the dolls he incarnates, and finally divide her emotions, preferences, and soul into countless dolls. Each doll is its own “doppelganger”, turning itself into a doll to wander and play in the fantasy world. Beauty, scars, and happiness are intertwined. Her imaginary world is a shelter of witches, sealing a myriad of intertwined feelings.

(Text and images courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok)