This exhibition presents works from Sethaseree’s series Cold War: The Mysterious (2019–22) that focus on specific authoritarian actors, freedom-fighters, political uprisings, and violent crackdowns of the 1960s and ’70s, but also imagery that draws more generally from the press and popular culture to convey the complications and chaos of this period. The immersive nature of the installation invites visitors to consider the perspective of everyday people experiencing an overload of foreign and local propaganda, of being caught up in a competition between the world’s dominant nations that brings war and unrest to their region, and of living under authoritarian governments perpetrating unspeakable horrors on their own citizens. Through multiple layers (sometimes as many as thirty or forty) of materials and images, the artist both reveals and obfuscates to express the collective memory and forgetting of history.
News
Cold War: The Mysterious by Thasnai Sethaseree is showing at Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cold War: The Mysterious by Thasnai Sethaseree. On view from September 27 to December 7, 2025, at the Gold Gallery, Floor 2L, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York, USA. This exhibition is curated by Ellen Avril chief curator and the Judith H. Stoikov Curator of Asian Art, and Professor Tamara Loos, Department of History
Excerpt from Johnson Museum of Art
About the Artist: Thasnai Sethaseree

