Nabhiraks Bhakdibhumi

Nabhiraks (Jade) Bhakdibhumi is a second-year MA candidate in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MODA) at Columbia University. Her research examines new media (the moving image and its prehistory in photography) alongside the postcolonial, specifically the semi-colonial, condition that shaped Thailand. Across her scholarship and curatorial practice, she advances an account of non-Western agency in the production and signification of images, positioning Thai and inter-Asian frameworks as generative sites of theory in their own right. She is the 2027 MODA Curates Fellow, with her exhibition opening at the Wallach Art Gallery in Spring 2027.

Before joining Columbia, Jade interned at the Office of Knowledge Management and Development under Thailand's Prime Minister's Office, where she contributed to public art projects that reconceived public space as a site for art. She currently holds a curatorial role at Nova Contemporary in Bangkok, where she works to advance the growth of emerging Thai artists within an international field of circulation and reception.

Jade has presented her research at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, for "Centers and Margins: Exploring the Boundaries Between East Asia and Beyond," with "The Sovereign Image: Royal Photographic Portraiture in Siam and Japan, 1851–1910." She has also presented at the City University of New York, for "When Is Asia Modern? Negotiating Borders of Modernisms," with "Celestial Vessels: Sino-Siamese Trade Through Benjarong Porcelain."