"Sinners are bullshit law writers, prejudiced, grab advantages for their group only. Their mouths will be opened by claws, putting hot irons inside. Cutting heads off, vultures and crows tear and eat until death, reborn like this for hundred kalpas

Sinners are gunmen who serve the mafia and tyranny, oppressing peaceful men to be afraid, doing unlawful business, making trouble everywhere. They will be sur- rounded by flocks of hungry dogs and crows gathering to eat them, they will die and be reborn again and again for five hundred kalpas

Sinners are weapon merchants; who profit from suffering and devastation. Their heads will be hanged down in cave of conflagration; hitting each other to death"

During the 1990s, Vasan Sitthiket consolidated his reputation for creating radical works that engaged directly with Thailand's most difficult social and political issues. This series of nine paintings was originally included in the ‘Inferno’ exhibition, staged at Bangkok’s National Gallery during the turbulent period after the 1991 military coup. The series, which was inspired by Sitthiket's readings of Traiphum Phra Ruang: The Book of Three Worlds – an important Thai Buddhist manuscript that describes the suffering of sinners – portrays visions of damnation for the greedy, the lustful and the hateful. The series brought attention to Thailand's mounting corruption and anticipated the violence of the clash between demonstrators and authorities in the 1992 massacre known as Black May. Like a premonition reflecting the barbaric events to come, the works are inscribed with poems detailing the atrocities that would be perpetrated by soldiers, police officers and ministers.