Bangkok-based designer and visual storyteller Martin Hao Chen places the same simple pink elephant into photographs taken across Thailand, using a quiet visual metaphor to express what years of corporate life left unspoken.
The elephant in the room is something everyone understands and nobody addresses. Martin Hao Chen took that phrase, found himself living it for years in a corporate environment, and eventually placed it, literally, in photographs. A simple pink elephant, wandering through landscapes across Thailand: Sukhothai, Pattaya, Bangkok, Khao Yai. Cities and temples and rivers and quiet corners where something is present that should perhaps be spoken about but isn’t. “Sometimes the only way to face what’s unspoken is to place it gently in plain sight,” he says.
The project started in 2025 during his sabbatical after years in digital product design. Taking a break gave him time and space to process what had built up, and photography and visual storytelling became the way through it. The pink elephant appears in the same form in every image, placed into photographs he had taken on travels across Thailand, kept in duotone with a treatment that makes the digital images feel printed on thick gallery paper. What began as a personal exercise became something others connected with when he started printing and framing the work and giving it to friends. The pressure, the need for space, the feeling of wanting honesty: these were not experiences he was carrying alone.
The series continues as an ongoing project, with archival pigment prints on fine art paper produced and framed by Chen himself.
Martin Hao Chen is a Bangkok-based designer and visual storyteller who creates zines and photo collages exploring personal narratives and everyday moments.
Website: cehnhao.com/the-pink-elephant Instagram: @haoontheroad
The Wandering Pink Elephant, 2025 to present. Archival pigment prints on fine art paper. Photographed across Thailand. All photographs and artwork: Martin Hao Chen.
