Punctuating the Unspeakable: Montien Boonma, Ritual, and the Boundaries of Language

Reflecting on grief, ritual, language, and the limits of expression.

In this reflective case study, Damchö explores the work of Thai artist Montien Boonma, focusing on the use of symbolic punctuation, ritual materiality, and the inexpressible spaces where grief and awakening meet. Through the lens of her own experience with spiritual rupture and embodied art practice, she traces how Boonma's question marks and exclamation marks became acts of communication beyond language — signs for what cannot be spoken but must still be lived.

Bandaid Buddha, an artwork by Damchö. Three repurposed Buddha forms are covered with text and hydrocoloidal healing bandaids, seated in stillness with silver speakers behind their heads like halos. This shrine-like installation merges symbolic body, wound, sound, and language in a gesture of ritual repair.

Montien Boonma: Art, Faith, and the Language of Suffering

Montien Boonma (1953-2000) expressed his practice not only through form but also through words and punctuation. His artist’s statements and drawings, primarily in English, provide intimate insight into his materials and installation ideations, which “consistently imagine new projects and possibilities for communicating with the divine” and which he hoped would be received in that way by the viewer[i]. Simultaneously, his work reflected a dialogue between a modernising Thai identity, deeply rooted in Theravada Buddhism, central to Thailand’s nation-religion-monarchy trinity. Through interviews and catalogue essays by those who knew him well, in particular the curator Apinan Poshyananda, insights can be gleaned into the subtle, heartfelt contemplations that stirred Boonma.

Boonma’s art, faith, and profound love for his wife, Chancham Boonma (nee Mukdaprokorn), were inseparable. However, Buddhist ideologies, as reckoned by a Buddhist monk, deemed their love would lead to suffering, suggesting they live apart for ten years.

Boonma and I share the experience of having our instinctual yearnings overridden by Buddhist clergy. For both of us, we experienced heart ache and suffering as a result. I have understood that therefore I was drawn to investigate how he expressed this in text and art. Throughout this essay links will be inserted that signpost my experiences. The intersecting entanglements of love, art and faith, and how these were signified, reached a particularly poignant moment when Chancham’s health began to decline in 1994 due to breast cancer.  As Boonma sat beside her hospital bed in silent anguish, he began covering the room with tracings of question marks and exclamation marks.  

Montien Boonma, Study for Adelaide, (detail). 1994. Mixed media on paper. Collection of Chongrux Chanthaworrasut, Bangkok.

Beyond Words: The Question Mark as Prayer

These symbols became his dialogue with suffering and, after Chancham’s passing, transformed into propositional prayers through which Boonma supplicated “all the sacred forces.”

The spiral of Boonma’s question mark represented a journey between the inner and outer realms, traversed through meditation. (see Study for Adelaide). These marks, untethered by words reflected his figurative speechlessness – words failing to express his despair, hope or the tension between the known and unknown. These were signs that signified an “expression that is not visible.”

Echoes of Experience: Personal Reflections on Spiritual Rupture

The Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths reminds us that suffering is a universal condition. For Boonma, whose art practice resonated with spiritual undertones, grief and bewilderment became the fodder for meaning-making during this period. I, too, have grappled with torment on the Buddhist path[ii]. Yet, in contrast to Boonma’s punctuation marks, I’ve relied on a flood of words rather than casting them aside to try to convey my bewilderment. See for example my artwork at the beginning of this essay, Bandaid Buddha. Still, I struggle with the limits of language in this context, which draws me to Boonma’s use of the question mark and exclamation mark - imbuing these signs with the agency to communicate beyond the bounds of punctuation. In this way, these symbols become text in their own right.

This essay will explore the depth of meaning behind Boonma’s question mark and exclamation mark, the significance of the minds’ intent in art, and attempt to give words to my hypothesis on the ultimate significance of these symbols in Boonma’s practice.

In order to insert question marks and exclamation marks into this document, I can use a touch command or navigate to Insert > Advanced Symbol > where these forms—‘?’ and ‘!’—can be selected. Once placed on the page, they become signs that communicate to the observer. Objectively, they are the visual representation of commonly used punctuation marks, yet within text, the question mark and exclamation mark function to punctuate, inquire, question, retort, exclaim, emphasise, accentuate, exaggerate, and to interrupt. (Interestingly, there are no punctuation characters used in Thai script - but that’s not to say he, or his modern Thai contemporaries were not familiar with them). The question mark allows for the expression of an enigma.[iii]

Boonma’s question mark was a stylised spiral—its body and point twirled like a divine ear or the urna on the Buddha’s brow.[iv]  Rooted in his faith and the setting in which the question mark and exclamation mark arose, the repetition of these marks became a rhythmic supplication.  In The Prayer for Abhisot his questioning prayer manifested through an automated fax feed, a continuous outpouring of inquiry. Boonma’s prayers, conveyed through the physical acts of drawing, printing and cutting these symbols became an in-turning endeavour to transmute his grief and suffering.

Montien Boonma, The Prayer for Abhisot, 1994. Video installation, monitors, fax machine, paper. Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Reflecting on the time of Chancham’s illness and her passing, Boonma said, “Reading and making art released my mind from the intense pressure, which was often on the verge of exploding.”[v] Through his work, it becomes clear that Boonma was embodying the truth that we tell stories to make sense of our suffering.

Material, Intent, and the Limits of Form

Boonma’s despair is palpable in his art—a parable through which we glimpse him encountering the core of his being where the seismic ruptures of suffering reside. In Buddhist belief, it is also where innate wisdom abides.[vi] An alchemy of insight and matter occurs in this spiritual, psychological and somatic space. Like Joseph Beuys, with whom Boonma found resonance,

“Art is not a process of illustration but a faithful means for recording the reality of the mind.”[vii]

Both Boonma and Beuys (and Bodhi Unbound) sought to work outside of conventional art systems, using their practice as a means to question the relationship between material reality and aesthetics, and to explore the genesis of form—the essence of creation itself.[viii]

Boonma understood that over time, our experiences shape belief. “Whatever we believe in, we create a space there. That space is a realm,” echoing Beuys' notion that thought is a form of sculpture.[ix]

Both artists were motivated by the affect of Will over Form, and I spent ten years asking myself if Will alone constitutes art.[x] It indeed constitutes creation, which is why I regard it as sculpting intent.

Timothy Morton. Instagram post of message to Laurie Anderson. 12 June 2021. Here, Morton extends my notion of sculpting intent to its furthest potential.  

Boonma’s intent manifests through the question mark and exclamation mark as symbols drawn in white against black backgrounds, silk-screened gold onto black fabric, or transmitted digitally. These motifs communicate a psychological space that co-exists with “real” space - mimetic arenas that communicate at an empathetic and kinaesthetic level.[xi]

Symbols of Becoming: Punctuation as Spiritual Architecture

In Boonma’s consideration of punctuated no-text, his symbols bridged drawing, sculpture and thought, creating a dialogue of dichotomies reminiscent of Beuys.[xii] “These signifiers stand for logic and reality that can be experienced […] illogically. This is the space between earth/heaven, saint/layman, materiality/impermanence.”[xiii]  Both artists employed a strategy that divided things into opposites, but through this, they established an energetic flow that rendered them interdependent —no longer oppositional, but part of a life-giving circularity.[xiv]

In his question mark and exclamation mark works, Boonma investigated the conversation in the gaps between questions and responses.  Like Beuys, he transformed deeply personal experiences into public works, determined to be released from the boundaries of objective and subjective understanding. Through transcending the personal, both Boonma and Beuys questioned conventional relationship between the material world and the realm of aesthetics.[xv] [xvi]

“I perceived a gap between these two… the question and the answer…

these two are never-ending. The answer can then become the subsequent question.

It’s like our mind.”[xvii]

Poshyandanda noted that in Boonma’s final years, his work sought “spiritual communion” and “an appeal for divine intervention.”[xviii]. His question marks and exclamation marks became meditative symbols. The spiral of the question mark reflects the flow between inner and outer realms, where the unknown is felt but remains unspoken. The exclamation mark captures the moment of realisation, where Boonma found a gap and recognised the essence of mind.[xix]

Montien Boonma, Sketch for Marks of Mind, 1994. Charcoal on paper, 80 x 120cm.

In this essay, I have inserted endnotes as gaps—attempts to express the inexpressible. Like Boonma, my question marks and exclamation marks punctuate these efforts, though both words and symbols feel inadequate.

Through the absence of words, Boonma has accentuated and inspired inflection of the full scope of their uses, expanding their meaning. Question marks and exclamation marks are his most powerful text.

With Boonma, I share the aspiration to allow the unspeakable to be realised in all its unbounded capacities, able to encapsulate the full scope of what a symbol can truly signify.

This essay was first developed as part of postgraduate research in contemporary art practice, and continues Damchö’s inquiry into ritual, materiality, grief, and symbolic language.

A full bibliography and extended notes are available upon request

[i] Apinan Poshyananda “Montien Boonma: Paths of Suffering.” In Montien Boonma Temple of the Mind, edited by Apinan Poshyananda, p8–39. New York: The Asia Society, 2003

[ii] See Michelle Tonkin, “Pure Perception and Pure Suffering: A Nun’s Experience of Abuse in a Major Tibetan Buddhist Organisation,” ed. Eileen Barker, Routledge Inform Series on Minority Religions and Spiritual Movements (Routledge, Forthcoming), see also Sexual Abuse Framed by Faith or Belief, Inform Seminar, 2020, and Mick Brown, “Sexual Assaults and Violent Rages. Inside the Dark World of Buddhist Teacher Sogyal Rinpoche,” The Telegraph (UK), September 21, 2017

[iii] Oxford English Dictionary. “Question Mark, n.” Oxford University Press, July 2023. Oxford English Dictionary. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1003100351.

[iv] Chiu, Melissa. “An Architecture of the Senses: Montien Boonma’s Installations in Context.” In Montien Boonma Temple of the Mind, edited by Apinan Poshyananda, p40–47. New York: The Asia Society, 2003.

[v] Boonma and Poshyananda, “Catalogue,” 80

[vi] In the Vajrayana, the innate nature of the mind is considered to be the ground of all.

[vii] Temkin, Ann, Bernice Rose, and Dieter Koepplin. Thinking Is Form, the Drawings of Joseph Beuys. p96 Philadelphia New York: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, 1993. https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_387_300063076.pdf

[viii] Temkin, Thinking, 81

[ix] Boonma cited in Poshyananda, “Paths,” 20 Artstudio (Special Joseph Beuys, Printemps 1987) 89.

[x] Michelle Tonkin, “How Do I Consider Aesthetics and Form When My Primary Concern Is Intent?” (unpublished, 2021), https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p7c6lf3muzpj41chmgdnh/Tonkin-Michelle_-PACT-1-Essay-on-Intent_2021.pdf?rlkey=pyw6syao9xla7892x9cijaj10&st=fr72g9bq&dl=0.

[xi] Whilst the text is referencing Beuys, I include it here as there is a resonance with Boonma’s … “The aesthetics had not simply to do with art but was a way of communicating with the world.” Temkin, Thinking, 98

[xii] Temkin, Thinking, 9

[xiii] Apinan Poshyananda interview with Montien Boonma, 22 October, 1994. Bangkok, Thailand.

[xiv] Temkin, Thinking ,84

[xv] The Swiss Art Critic and Curator, Dieter Koepplin has suggested that, for Beuys, “the very depth of depression transcendence and freedom are achieved. […] Thus, we see foreshadowed the scores for actions by Beuys, who later objectified the intensely personal elements of drawings such as this and, transcending the personal, attempted another kind of asking, another practice of evaluating existence, which questions the ordinary relationship between the material world and the aesthetic.” Temkin, Thinking, 8 and Poshyananda, “Paths,” 16, 20.

[xvi] During his question mark and exclamation mark period (1994-1995), Boonma intensified his Buddhist practice and turned to the doctrines on healing. Poshyananda, “Paths,” 20, Chiu, “Architecture,” 41, 42

 Through this, he began to utilise herbal medicines as an element of his work. This introduced an olfactory aspect that was one of the signatures of many of his later works.  While it would be a far reach to propose that the element of scent was ‘text’ its use arose through the conditions of Boonma living an experience of the inexpressible. As such, like the question mark and exclamation mark, the scented healing medicines that Boonma incorporated into his works, dialogued into the space where form and text have limited capacity. With its ability to communicate with the limbic system and bypass the Visio-centric mind, scent is a medium that can convey many extended subtleties that words cannot. I have also worked with creating an olfactory composition, ‘Scendence.’ (2023) This was made through a speculative and poetic process which tells an autoethnographical story. Through the process of writing this essay, I have come to recognise that, as painful as it is, survivors of spiritual trauma do not want the unspeakable to be unheard.

‘Scendence’ shares an affiliation with ‘transcendence’ and Timothy Morton’s “Subscendence” Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People, Paperback edition (London New York: Verso, 2019) 101-120

[xvii] Boonma and Poshyananda, “Catalogue,” 103.

[xviii] Poshyananda, “Paths,” 32

[xix] Boonma and Poshyananda, Catalogue, 100