Raised in Chiang Mai, she holds a Master of Arts in Art Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Doctorate in Fine and Applied Arts from Chulalongkorn University. She co-founded Project 304, an alternative and independent art organization in Bangkok, which she co-directed from 1996 to 2002. Her curatorial practice addresses issues of social and political transformation affecting artists from Thailand and beyond, with a particular focus on Cold War legacies and their aftermath.
She has curated and co-curated numerous regional and international exhibitions, including Under Construction at Tokyo Opera City Gallery and the Japan Foundation Forum, Tokyo (2003); Politics of Fun, an exhibition of Southeast Asian artists co-curated with Ong Keng Sen at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2005); The 1st – 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Bangkok (1997-2005) and Unreal Asia with David Teh at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen (2010).
Gridthiya curated Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s The Serenity of Madness at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai, which toured across Asia, Europe, and the United States (2016–2019), commissioned by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. She was also a member of the curatorial team for Imagined Borders, the 12th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018). In 2023, she served as Co-Artistic Director of the 3rd Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai with Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Her recent exhibitions include Errata: Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai (2021–2022); Kader Attia: The Urgency of Existence at the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2024); Shattered Worlds: Micro-Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe at the Jim Thompson Art Center and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre; and I Understand Everything: A Retrospective of Almagul Menlibayeva at Almaty Museum of Art, Almaty, Kazakhstan; Living in Elastic Time, Thai Pavillion, Cheoungju Craft Biennale, Cheongju, South Korea; Som Supaparinya solo exhibition’s MO NU ME NT, Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2025). A 2018 fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership at MoMA, she has served on the Acquisition Committee of the Singapore Art Museum since 2020. In 2024, she was a member of the Finding Committee for documenta 16, Kassel. She received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2023 and the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2025.