The Opium Smoking White Elephant - The Delicate One in the Golden Robe

Hahnemühle Fine Art Archival Print
Sheet size: 30 × 30 cm with a 1 cm white border
Year: 2025 edition
Edition: 1 + 1 AP

In this work from the Buddha's Smile series, a young woman appears in a magnificent, AI-enhanced robe that simultaneously evokes temple ornamentation, mythological costumes, and ritual protective clothing. The figure's face appears serene, almost contemplative—an expression reminiscent of the famous subtle "inner smile" in Buddhist art.

Her gown forms a kaleidoscopic network of gold, filigree, and organically intertwined lines. Mythological animals, plant fragments, and abstract patterns seem to grow out of the fabric itself, as if nature lived on in the clothing. The elaborate headdress resembles the crown of a young guardian goddess: playfully whimsical, yet brimming with symbolic meaning.

The figure stands before a landscape of mist, rock formations, and soft color gradients—a space reminiscent of those "liminal worlds" where, in Thai animism, nature spirits, ancestors, and elemental beings are believed to be present. The AI ​​intensifies this atmosphere through a hallucinatory clarity of detail.

The opium-smoking white elephant recognizes in such AI visions a striking affinity to the spiritual reality of Thailand: the coexistence of ornament, nature, ritual, and spirit beings coalesces into an image that appears both traditional and futuristic. The unfiltered, intuitive formal language also recalls the expressive directness of Western Art Brut.