One Woman and the Eight Monkeys - Suriya Namwong

Bonze 2024 in Museum of Contemporary Art, Bangkok

When I first saw this sculpture, it immediately caught my attention.
But it wasn’t until I read the description and understood its meaning that I knew — I had to share it.
It’s a work that doesn’t let you forget it.

“The Eight Worldly Conditions — gain, status, praise, happiness, loss, disgrace, blame, and suffering — constantly affect the human mind. No matter how much we try to escape them, these forces continue to revolve around us, drawing us toward pleasure or pushing us into pain.
The essential question is not whether these conditions exist, but how we choose to perceive and respond to them.

The sculpture One Woman and the Eight Monkeys embodies this concept through its artistic form. The elegant female figure represents the human mind — delicate and vulnerable, yet possessing the strength to protect and regulate itself. The eight monkeys surrounding her symbolize the Eight Worldly Conditions, each provoking emotional responses and inner turmoil.
Her posture, which conveys an attempt to shield herself from their chaotic influence, reflects the struggle of human beings to maintain emotional balance amidst external disturbances.
Awareness and self-discipline can help free us from the grip of emotions.However, the more profound question remains: who is it that allows these emotions to take control of our minds in the first place?”

It’s hard to look away from this contrast — movement and stillness, chaos and calm. The monkeys are full of energy, climbing and reaching, almost conspiring to pull her out of her silence. And yet she remains — not in resistance, but in focus. There’s tension in her stillness, and a quiet kind of strength in her calm.

Perhaps it’s my own projection, but after reading a book about dopamine, I can’t help seeing this sculpture as a portrait of the modern mind. To me, the woman is awareness — the part of us that tries to stay present — and the monkeys are everything that distracts us: desires, addictions, pleasures that promise relief but lead nowhere. Sugar. Notifications. Shopping. The quick spark of dopamine.
A world that shouts “more”, and someone inside trying simply to be.

It’s a sculpture about that fragile moment of choice — when you decide whether to be pulled away or to remain within yourself.

What do you see when you look at it?