I alighted from the BTS skytrain at exactly 3 PM. The contrast between the refrigerated air inside the train and the station’s cemented heat quickly evaporated my midday drowsiness and sharpened my awareness: Bangkok, with its cacophonous and seditious logic-in-chaos. As I descended into the rambunctious streets below, street vendors dotted the pavement, selling sliced watermelon, Isan sausages, and lunchboxes. Traces of the city’s age-old thrifty traditions still jostled with its ambitious modernization. The key to understanding Bangkok is to walk the tightrope between these equally forceful impulses.

The Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB) is a somewhat recent addition to the city’s flourishing art scene. Scattered across eleven venues, the biennial split itself into two paths: While the River Route followed the Chao Phraya, with its ancient temples and national power seats like the National Museum, the City Route intersected with mazelike train lines to include contemporary art spaces and developments such as the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) and the mint One Bangkok complex. A cartography of Bangkok and its parallel manifestations, BAB and its seventy-six artists strove not only to showcase its breadth of artistic creativity and engagement, but also to paint a complex portrait of its home city as a melting pot for the old and new, the local and the foreign.