Hutsama Juntaratana

I’ve known Farsai for several years, as she used to be a neighbour of mine, and this was not the first time I had taken her portrait. The difference this time was that I photographed her in her studio at The Garments, a place shared by many artists and designers whom I would later photograph as part of the project. Farsai was the first person to introduce me to the space.

Hutsama “Farsai” Junratana is an architectural designer specialising in regenerative design and research into local bio-based materials. She also teaches design with bio-based materials at INDA, Chulalongkorn University. Material prototypes from her Plastic Twins project are archived in the Future Materials Bank, Jan van Eyck Academie’s archive of sustainable materials.

This session felt particularly special. In her studio, Farsai showed me some of her research and experiments with biomaterials. I immediately noticed the translucent quality of one of the materials, something she had also explored for lighting design, and asked if I could use it for her portrait.

I placed a light behind it and asked Farsai to sit in front. Seeing the material illuminated made me realise more clearly the aesthetic quality of her work. It was not simply a sustainable biomaterial designed to serve a function. It had its own texture, colour and presence, qualities that came from the way Farsai had developed and worked with it.