Schooled in traditional Cambodian painting at the Royal University of Fine Arts, and later the Saint-Étienne École des Beaux-arts in Paris, Em Riem opens a new exhibition tonight. Glorious Numbers is a series of starkly confrontational portraits that conjure the horrors of S-21, the most notorious Khmer Rouge interrogation centre, in homage to its many victims. Says the artist: “I think of Man Ray: I, too, paint what I cannot photograph. And by painting these beings which were before their death photographed, I do not carry out a duty of remembrance. Much more humbly, I am then in a period for me almost always unspeakable and from time to time it comes to irrigate my creativity. I was a child then. But I did not forget. I began to paint in the memory of the victims of the Khmer Rouge about twenty years ago. There were the abstract paintings and there were portraits. In the peace of mind of my workshop, these faces do not haunt me; I just collect their suffering with love. I tell them: ‘You see good that you are not forgotten!’ I also tell them: ‘Each of you appears in the plenitude of its dignity because these numbers make in fact the glory of your humanity.’”
WHO: Em Riem
WHAT: Glorious Numbers art exhibition opening
WHERE: Tepui @ Chinese House, Sisowath Quay & Street 87
WHEN: 6:30pm November 21
WHY: Familiar horrors in a different light