Despite its upheavals, 2020 has been a big year for contemporary figurative artist Kultida, better known as Jiab. On a personal level, the Lyon-based artist has found self-acceptance and more notably recently won the BP Portrait Award from The National Portrait Gallery in London. Jiab was born in 1979 in Nakhon Phanom and studied filmography at Thammasat University before working as a casting director at a Bangkok production company. She was inspired to become a serious artist after viewing a David Hockney retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery. She relocated to London in 2006 and then Berlin in 2008 before settling in France. Today she uses her work to explore the Asian diaspora, not only to communicate a clearer picture of the Asian identity through her sitters but also to better understand herself, a goal she also seeks through regular meditation. Jiab is currently looking forward to her first solo gallery show in San Francisco in January 2021.