Harit Srikhao is a Thai photographer whose nightmare fantasies are drawn from real life or the political history of coups and military rule in his country. The coup d’etat of 2010 inspired Harit to look afresh into Thailand’s history. “I started to collect in-depth information about Thailand and its history, and I was surprised by the awful truths concealed by many elegant ceremonies.

“One piece of information that shocked me was that the crackdown in 2010 caused over 90 deaths. As a result, the series Whitewash started with a question to myself. Why have I never realised this in spite of being in the event and watching the news on television?

In an interview, he said, “My works between 2015–2017 mainly focus on the process of mental surgery of authority in Thailand. Beginning with Whitewash in 2015 and 2016, I explore my own ignorance of political violence in Bangkok in 2010 by returning to places I used to go with the school during that time. To make a contour sketch of the overall picture of mind control, I made Mt. Meru series (2017) by trying to redefine Hindu cosmology called  "Traibhumikatha" which divide the universe into three: Heaven, Earth and Hell to justify the concept of goodness and sin, life and after life and karmic law. Most of all, in Thailand, the metaphysics that shapes social structure and hierarchy in which the king is at the highest position of the universe.

"Both works intend to talk about the ability of photography and images to construct truth and transformation. Whitewash presents the idea of how images can control the past. This idea has been developed and finally became Mt. Meru. The function of an image in Mt. Meru is not only to distort remembrance, but also to control dreams and to motivate an ultimate desire. The work is based on the reality of surreal phenomenon in Thailand.”