Tintin Cooper

Twenty years ago, Tintin Cooper invited me to a rooftop party in Ari. We had first connected through Myspace, and it was the first time we met in person. That night she introduced me to many of the people who would become my friends during my early years in Thailand.

We gradually lost touch after she returned to the UK to continue her studies and later settled in Berlin. When she eventually returned to Bangkok for a residency and exhibition at SAC Gallery, I took the opportunity to photograph her. We first worked around the gallery, carrying pieces from Banana Ghost into the street. An angry banana tree and a figure combining Pikachu with Pepe the Frog seemed almost more comfortable there than inside the white cube. That mix of Thai folklore, internet culture, absurdity and humour runs through Tintin’s work. It may look cute or silly at first, but this is also how she approaches more complicated ideas without making the work feel heavy.

Still, we wanted something more personal too, so we met again in Ari, where our friendship had begun. We passed the house she had once shared with other artists, then climbed to the rooftop of the small apartment she was renting. Laundry moved above the low skyline while smog softened the sunset. After a few photographs, our conversation turned unexpectedly towards loss. Both of us had been shaped by the deaths of our partners.

Tintin told me she had stopped making art for nearly four years and turned instead to woodworking, learning to build chairs with hand tools. When she returned to art, she decided to work entirely on her own terms rather than reshape her practice around curatorial themes. Twenty years had passed since that first rooftop party. Ari had changed, and so had we, but from one rooftop to another, something of the Tintin I first met was still there.