Alex Face

During Bukruk in 2013, I was documenting the street art festival with my students around Ratchathewi. Late one night, I met Alex Face for the first time. A young father then, he was smiling, and we talked before he climbed into a cherry picker to add another of the three-eyed children that had already become his signature across Bangkok. When I visited him again in 2026, I met the same man, with the same smile, but in a very different setting. Alex and his daughter Mardi welcomed my partner and me into their bright, quiet home.

The rhythm of his working life had changed. Alex told me he now tries to use daylight and rest at night rather than keeping the late hours of the past. His studio is still where he makes larger works and uses spray paint, but he also paints and sketches in the house, closer to family life and softer light.

As a cyclist myself, I kept noticing bicycles around the house. Alex’s relationship with cycling began in childhood, exploring his neighbourhood with his younger brother. It later became exercise, then travel. In 2025 he cycled from Bangkok to Penang, drawing and making work along the way. Moving slowly, he told me, gives him time to notice landscapes and the ways people live. He dreams of longer journeys, perhaps even across continents, an idea I could easily relate to.

Back in the living room, Mardi was drawing at her desk. They sometimes make art together, exchanging ideas across generations. Their relationship also runs through the three-eyed child that has followed Alex’s work for years. Inspired by Mardi, the figure has changed as she has grown and as Alex himself has changed. It now carries more of his concern about the future. Like Alex, perhaps the character has never really stood still.