La Inthonkaew
Born in a jungle village in Thailand, the daughter of a shaman, La is an artist shaped by an extraordinary life story. A survivor of the 2004 tsunami, a mother at fifteen, and a grandmother by thirty-three, she now lives in Prague and paints with obsessive intensity. Blending shamanic visions, self-portraits, and natural creatures, her works reveal a world that is both intimate and mystical.
La was born in 1980 or 1981 in a remote jungle village in central Thailand. A Thai citizen of mixed Burmese, Laotian, and Chinese heritage, she comes from a lineage steeped in spiritual and healing traditions: her father was a shaman, her great-uncle a revered Buddhist monk known for his miraculous powers, and the women in her family were traditionally midwives.
She attended the village school for four years, riding there on the back of her favorite water buffalo, but quickly lost interest, often escaping through the window before classes ended. After her father’s tragic death, the family broke apart. At age eleven, La found herself alone and responsible for her two younger brothers, surviving in the jungle for two years as a hunter-gatherer.
She later held a string of manual jobs: construction worker, cook, cleaner, masseuse, beach umbrella renter. A mother at fifteen and grandmother by thirty-three, she narrowly survived the 2004 tsunami in Phuket—a traumatic event that triggered a profound artistic awakening.
La has painted since childhood, using whatever paper she could find and inventing her own pigments from mud and plants. In 2010, she discovered her partner’s oil paints and embraced them as her medium of choice. Now based in Prague, she paints compulsively, often late into the night, saying she’s never managed to adjust to Central European time. Her vibrant body of work—filled with people, animals, fungi (especially toadstools), and recurring self-portraits—moves between shamanic insight, sensory memory, and glimpses into alternate dimensions of reality.
