Battambang artist Sin Rithy’s latest exhibition, Undivided Nature; The Death Within Life / The Life Within Death, currently on show at Romeet gallery, is a reflection on nature, life and death; life is a blank space to be filled and death as a certain but potentially never-ending journey.
Through Rithy’s use of empty sections of wooden frames, he alludes to the idea of life being a blank space. In among the portraits of friends and acquaintances, trees, and scenes of roosters mid-cockfight, there are some frames that have been purposely left bare. Not even a canvas covers the empty half, while the other half of the frame depicts intense images of combatting cockerels.
Once a keen supporter of cockfighting, Rithy began to question his relationship with the animals he was intentionally putting in harm’s way.
“If I’m like this, I use my life in a bad way. Before I thought about getting money, but to make another life feel pain, to make myself happy but to make another life unhappy, I think it is not good for living.”
Recognising the similarities between the lives of humans and other animals, Rithy says that they are essentially identical aside from the actions of the animal itself. He recognises that as sentient beings, humans have the ability to make active choices and give their lives meaning.
“Our lives are the same, but if I still have the action of the chicken – so my life is the same as the chicken – in this situation until I die, my life doesn’t have anything. It’s a waste of time.”
Before Rithy attempted to understand the animal and consider how it might feel to have someone try to ultimately destroy you – cockfighting often results in death or serious injury to the birds – he had little difficulty killing animals, chickens in particular. But since his realisation that the life of an animal is not so different to that of a human he has found it hard to go through with it.
“Before I was strong enough to kill the animal, especially the chicken. But now I feel pity, I’m not strong enough, and maybe I cannot. It’s not easy for me. When I look back into the past, I feel terrible about what I did before.”
A student of Phare Ponleu Selpak, Rithy seems to have branched out from his portraiture style and delved into works that depict a vivid representation of the animals he has found a way to relate to through the value of life.
Rithy’s exhibition literally comes to life in the form of his live painting. To the beat of Khmer boxing music, Rithy paints an image from the perspective of a rooster during a cockfight.
The live painting sessions are dramatic and Rithy often throws paint at the canvas. “This is the shirt I always use for live painting,” he says, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his long sleeved shirt to reveal a paint-spattered white top.
Although Rithy’s paintings are captivating enough in themselves, he feels his live painting sessions add an exciting element to his exhibitions.
“I have to do something to make [people] remember me forever.”