Som Supaparinya graduated from Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai University before continuing her studies in Medienkunst (Media Arts) at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (University of Graphics and Book Arts) in Leipzig, Germany. Som’s works highlight specific incidents frequently related to social and political structures impacting the environment, including changes of landscapes and geography both domestically and regionally. She often combines hands-on experiences with research into stories and collaborates with people from other fields, using various media including objects, photographs and semi-documentary videos. The Rivers They Don’t See features a journey from the Salween River along the Thailand-Myanmar border to the Ping River and the Chao Phraya River through central Thailand into the Gulf of Thailand. The video shows ordinary lifestyles of farmers, fisherfolk, villagers and workers who live with the waterways as well as their displacements due to changes of landscape caused by the macro-level human encroachment of the environment, either politically or economically driven. These reflect the use of either administrative or major land development power from the past to the present and connected to the projected future. The impacts are not only limited to the physical and visible ones but also the hidden and complicated natural, economic and political ones, greatly affecting the unpredictable. The ecosystems, cultures, lifestyles and livelihood of humans, animals and vegetation are all widely affected on an unimaginable scale, like endless ripples caused by an object being dropped onto the surface of water. The Rivers They Don’t See invites its viewers along a journey along the waterways through a semi-documentary video questioning future prediction. Who exactly are “they” who decide what to do with our natural resources?