The Three Little Pigs: Childhood, Motherhood, and the Time the Forest Disappeared

Becoming a mother led me back to The Three Little Pigs, a fairy tale I had loved as a child but had never truly questioned until now. One day, while watching the story with my child, I found myself wondering how long it had existed. As I traced its history, I became fascinated not by its origins, but by a single image in its opening: a beautiful forest.

That simple phrase prompted an unsettling question: If this fairy tale were written today, would that forest still exist?

Living in an era marked by climate change, deforestation, and ecological uncertainty, I began to imagine how this familiar story might unfold in the present. How would the three little pigs build their homes? What materials would they choose? What values would a contemporary fairy tale pass on to future generations? Reimagining The Three Little Pigs became a way of reflecting on the environmental realities that shape the world my child will inherit.

At the same time, returning to this story also led me back to my own childhood.

When I was six years old, my father suddenly developed a psychiatric illness. Nearly three decades ago, mental health was rarely understood in Thai society, and my family lived under the weight of silence, shame, and social stigma. I was bullied by neighborhood children, concealed my family's story from classmates, and gradually learned to hide parts of myself in order to belong. During those years, fairy tales became more than children's stories—they became emotional refuges, places where imagination offered a sense of safety that reality often could not.

Revisiting The Three Little Pigs as a mother transformed the story into something deeply personal. Through this project, I perform the role of the mother pig who builds the third house—not simply as a character from a fairy tale, but as a figure of care, protection, and resilience. The act of rebuilding the story also becomes an act of rebuilding an inner sense of safety. Every story I tell my child is, in many ways, a story I wish someone had told me.

The Three Little Pigs: Childhood, Motherhood, and the Time the Forest Disappeared is a multidisciplinary exhibition bringing together painting, performance, video, artist's books, recycled cardboard, and artificial intelligence. These different media reconstruct a familiar fairy tale as a contemporary narrative that connects personal memory with ecological responsibility.

Rather than presenting environmental crisis as a distant global issue, I approach it through the intimate relationship between mother and child. The house built by the mother pig becomes more than a shelter; it becomes a metaphor for emotional security, ecological care, and the fragile environments—both internal and external—that sustain human life.

Ultimately, this project asks how stories shape the ways we understand family, nature, and belonging. It proposes that caring for the child within ourselves and caring for the planet are not separate acts, but deeply interconnected ones. If fairy tales once shaped the imagination of children, what stories should we tell today so that future generations may still imagine forests, living worlds, and hopeful futures?