How did you end up in Pattani?
I’m not a photojournalist. I do more artistic projects. And I don’t really choose a subject; I choose a destination. The other places I had covered were in Japan and this was my first time in Thailand. I was curious about the South because I had this image from the media of bombings, death, things like that. I had no idea of the South’s culture or history. I was driven by my curiosity.

How long did you stay there?
I was there several times, for about four months overall. I started in Yala and from there I bought a bicycle and went through Pattani and Narathiwat. Then by chance, I found some locals who showed me a very old house, they called it the palace. I was eventually invited by the family there to live with them and stayed a couple months.

This exhibition covers just the house?
Yes. There is an Islamic shaman and healer staying there but it’s a large compound which used to belong to a raja. So you see the people coming to visit him, living around the house. It’s very intimate. It shows the culture, the superstitions, the Malay culture, the Chinese culture.

Where you witnessing poltergeist-like exorcisms?
It’s a very intense atmosphere but not particularly scary. These people are actually very friendly. I think I presented that. But I saw incredible stories. One son who was a drug addict and stole from his parents. A woman abandoned by her husband. Villagers who had relatives arrested by the army for two years, without trial, and they don’t know how to get them back. A woman who couldn’t walk at all from a motorcycle accident. She had been at the hospital. She was carried to the shaman by her husband and one day she was able to walk. I think he has real abilities to heal but it wasn’t only magic, he does massage.

Could you feel the political tension living there?
There were young guys staying, in a separate part of the compound. They would enter from underneath, through a different staircase. One morning, the military stormed into the house and took them. But you don’t hear much. In the South they have a kind of law of silence, like the mafia in Sicily. But I wouldn’t want to discuss the army on the record. Let’s just say it’s not just what you see on the surface. My work is not a political statement, though. I try to give a different view of the South. Of course, you can dig deeper. You can look at the history behind the pictures and it goes back hundreds of years, before the area was annexed by Siam.