Artist Riety Pahn unfurls a vision that is both surreal and sobering—a first chapter in what she calls “the lore of a broken world.” Her latest exhibition, Ballad for the Breathing, presented by 10 10 Art Space at The StandardX, Bangkok from June 1 to July 31, is less a showcase of art and more an invocation—a memory excavated from the future.
This world she conjures is edging toward the Sixth Mass Extinction. Once alive with the pulse of magic, nature has been gutted to make way for modern life. And yet, what Pahn offers isn’t just ecological lament. It’s myth-making. Ballad for the Breathing walks the line between prophecy and parable, reality and ruin.
In her fractured universe, machines carry the burden of memory. Spirits echo through forgotten corridors. There is a silence that doesn't simply fall—it reverberates. Through mixed media, immersive installations, and storytelling that feels ancient yet speculative, Pahn constructs a haunting mythology of resistance and remembrance. She speaks of “the first light that didn’t flicker,” of “the war that didn't take just bodies” and of the technocratic rise.
And within this quiet, there’s reverence. A mourning not just for what’s lost, but for what was sacred: the cycle of life, death, and renewal. A cycle that once governed all things—until it broke.
Ballad for the Breathing asks us not to fix this world, but to feel it. To walk through its remnants. To listen to the spirits and the silences. To step into a story that feels imagined, yet eerily familiar.
It is the kind of exhibition that lingers long after you've left the room, so check it out at The StandardX, Bangkok until July 31.
