How Thailand’s ‘Banksy’ creates headaches for junta on Bangkok walls

Thailand’s junta chief caricatured as a “lucky cat” with a paw raised to rake in money, or his face crossed out by a thick, red line – daring graffiti is cropping up across Bangkok as the city’s walls become a canvas for rare political scorn.

The pioneer of the new wave of street artists is “Headache Stencil”, whose spray cans satirise the powerful in a country where free expression has been muted since a 2014 coup.

Dubbed Thailand’s “Banksy”, Headache – whose nickname alludes to the pain he hopes to inflict on the mighty – catapulted to fame in January with a piece skewering junta number two Prawit Wongsuwon, who was struggling to explain his collection of undeclared luxury watches.

The stencil art showing Prawit’s face inside an alarm clock was a jab at the lack of financial transparency by generals who seized power claiming that only they could save the country from untrammeled corruption. It was a bold move in a tightly-controlled country where simply reading George Orwell’s 1984 novel in public is deemed defiant and whose well-connected elite are quick to file criminal defamation charges.

Speaking at his Bangkok studio, Headache is unrepentant.