Artists lead push for change in Thailand’s northeast

KHON KAEN, Thailand — Inside an abandoned nightclub, a woman dressed in the white robe of a Buddhist nun stands laughing in front of a mirror. Around the corner, a trail of 112 raw chicken feet leads visitors into the ruins of a brothel that once housed sex workers from nearby Laos.

Both sites served as venues for Khon Kaen Manifesto, a subversive biennial art festival, held for the second time from Dec. 10 to Dec. 20 in the northeastern city of Khon Kaen.

“The hacked-off chicken feet symbolize the fact that people here have been cut off from their rights as citizens for too long,” says Thanom Chapakdee, a retired art professor and the directing influence behind the festival. The number of chicken feet is a reference to Article 112 of Thailand’s criminal code, an archaic defamation law that was recently used to charge pro-democracy activists with the crime of lese-majeste, or…