Art – Advisor

Portrait of a wasteland playground

Wandering through the art-filled streets of the Boeung Kak precinct, it’s hard to ignore the immense, artificial sand plain lumped dissonantly in the backdrop. Awkward-looking, but ominous in its meaning, the barren stretch of land is a result of the 99-year lease that was signed to private development company Shukaku Inc. in 2007. The lake proceeded to be filled with sand in the following year, resulting in heavy flooding of the area and the eviction of thousands of locals from their homes. Yet, in the shadow of a recently erected skyscraper in a nearby neighbourhood, children “lucky” enough to remain in their hometown today play happily in the giant sandpit, while older siblings motocross in the dunes.

Four photographers capture the incongruous landscape and the impact of development on the Boeung Kak community and its social dynamics in a new photographic exhibition at Bophana Centre. Three Lives of Boeung Kak illustrates three key aspects of the area’s ongoing transmutation, as seen through the lenses of photographers Julie Bardeche, Vincent de Wilde, Elinor Fry and De Shreng Lim.

An incongruous landscape

Community efforts have proven somewhat efficacious in regenerating the neighbourhood after severe water damage. Organised cleanups and an injection of art and regular music events continue to draw visitors back to the once lively backpacker area. However, the precinct hasn’t entirely shaken the ghetto vibe it adopted since the filling of the lake and mass exodus of the community, with many locals still clearly living an impoverished existence in its wake.

French-born Bardeche explains, “The ‘three lives’ title represents the three angles through which the four of us look at the lake. It’s also evocative of the past, present and future times – I wanted to create a linkage between visual and time dimensions. Vincent’s photos mostly feature life along the railway, to the Southwest of Boeung Kak: a past or soon-to-disappear aspect of that part of town. De’s focus is mainly on the present life on the lake and the sand dunes.”

Bardeche and Fry’s third angle initially intended to focus purely on the street art that has emerged in Boeung Kak in the last few years. As they spent more time in the area, however, she found herself becoming immersed in the lives that lay beyond the graffiti-sprayed facades.

“My photos were first focused on the interactions between the street art and the inhabitants. Nevertheless, as I walked around the lake, I became increasingly interested in life in the sand dunes,” Bardeche says. “In particular, I was struck by the contrasts between the simplicity of the residents’ lifestyle and the growth of high-rise buildings in the background, which foreshadow the future of the area.”

Consequently, the photographers all highlight the stark contrast between the life of the lake residents and the rapid development of the nearby town to some degree within their work. Many of Bardeche’s photos centre around children who play in the sand with smiling faces and torn clothes – cranes and skyscrapers all the while encroaching on the horizon.

Lim encapsulates this incongruity further as he describes his interactions with the young men featured in his Boys of Boeung Kak series.

“I asked them about what it was like living there, and what it was like before the lake was filled. Many were unable to answer. Perhaps they had forgotten what it was like living next to the lake. Perhaps they had become used to the barren landscape that was now their playground,” Lim says. “But some were able to conjure up thoughts and memories of better times. One boy, Panet, age 16, said to me, rather despondently, ‘I don’t have money, because of empty water.’”

And yet, 20-year-old Yong Savon answered, pointing toward the cranes in the distance, that he wanted to be an engineer. “I thought it was poignant that [he] aspired to be that generation that would build Cambodia,” Lim says.

Poignant, perhaps. Though, if anything, the response seems unexpected – if not completely disparate – to that which you’d expect from an individual whose livelihood has been severely threatened by the implementation of such development practices.

Bernache, meanwhile, spent her time predominantly among the older residents who were relocated within the area. Most are parents of the children who now play in the very foundations of their family’s enduring despair. Old enough to remember the gritty details of the relocation process, the outlook of these individuals is justifiably more harrowed than that of their kin.

“They lost their business and struggle to earn a living,” Bernache says. “They feel injustice, sadness and worry about their future and that of their children and grandchildren. “I believe that they mostly have not been able to adapt to their new situation yet. Some initiatives seek to provide the residents with alternatives – education, housing, legal counselling, jobs and ideas. But it is a slow process and it’s also dependent on how the constructions will evolve.”

United by art

Bernache’s time spent shooting the activity and interactions of the sand dune kids and their parents has paradoxically allowed her greater insight into the significant role played by her initial subject of interest.

“Street art has become an increasingly important part of the life around the lake, as benevolent artists seek to revive the area and attract attention to the neighbourhood,” she says. “This raises funds for local NGOs, which in turn seeks to secure the future of the lakeside area.”

While Bernache does not speak for all locals in the area, many have demonstrated their appreciation of the economic injection and increased traffic afforded by ongoing creative activities. Bernache adds that increased involvement of local artists could add further value to the initiatives.

“I believe in this initiative, especially since it has involved quite a few Khmer artists already. It has certainly attracted positive attention to the lakeside area and the issues faced by its residents,” she says. “Quite a few people did not know about it until they came to an urban art event there. I just hope that more Khmer people will get involved, as the crowd is mostly international. This is, I suppose, just a matter of time and capacity building.”

Simone Art Bistrot is an exemplary model reflecting the growing efforts to regenerate the area through tasteful street art and inclusive music and art events. French owners Ludi Labille and Marj Arnaud were key players in the clean-up efforts following the initial major floods, while their bistro-gallery has earned its crust as a creative mecca both within the neighbourhood and beyond.

Both Lubille and Arnaud have already noticed a rise in local artists who are involved in the beautification of the walls surrounding Simone Art, as well as increased participation in their events. The recent Art in Solidarity festival, designed to unite the community through positive and creative action, saw a mix of local and international artists bearing spray cans and sharing original ideas.

“Solidarity is necessary for us to evolve as a community,” Labille says. “We are collaborating with many different artists and supporters who share this vision and we have plans for future collaborations that will help develop the community and encourage art. It’s about developing art and being human. If we come together we can do great things.”

Three Lives photographer de Wilde echoes the significance of solidarity in his photographs of life by the railway.

“With my photographs, I want to show those glimpses of life and positivity beyond the appalling poorness of this community and the changes occasioned by the filling of the lake nearby,” he says. “Against all odds, for those who remained along the railway, there is somehow a quality of life there, likely due to solidarity, unity and intense social life, like in some Cambodian rural areas.”

De Wilde’s photos focus on maintaining compassion, hope and optimism in times of intense turmoil.

“If viewers look at the community living along the railway with more humanism, empathy and positiveness, I would be happy,” he says. “My photos aim at being both aesthetic and positive. I dislike ‘miserabilism’ and prefer reflecting reasons of hope even in the most sordid conditions.”

While Bernache shares this view, she makes it clear that this should not detract from the grave reality reflected through her series.

“I hope that [viewers] will get a feel of the uncertainties surrounding the future of this area, highlighted by the flaky and ephemeral happiness of the activities and art depicted in the photos,” she says.

Three Lives of Boeung Kak opens 6:30pm, Friday June 19 at Bophana Centre, #64 St. 200.

Village meets city

While many visitors pass through Mondulkiri, comparatively few make the effort to venture to the neighbouring province of Ratanakiri. Cedric Delannoy’s latest exhibition aims to challenge archaic preconceptions of Ratanakiri, its people and their lifestyles.

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Cedric Delannoy’s exhibition Ratanakiri brings a unique insight into the lives of the people of the province to the hustle of Phnom Penh.

“Many people don’t know about Ratanakiri. That’s the case of almost everybody I’ve met; they went to Mondolkiri but they did not make the step forward to go to Ratanakiri. So I thought to myself, “Let’s bring Ratanakiri to Phnom Penh so they can have another view of the province,” Delannoy says.

Delannoy’s collection of black and white photographs was captured over three years, while he worked in Ratanakiri as a technical manager on a food security and nutrition project.
“I was using my camera, reports and Facebook account to document the project, so I was always [working on] it,” Delannoy says.

Delannoy found that at the end of each month he had two or three standout photographs. The result of Delannoy’s three years of photographic documentation offers a rare peek into the lives of people living in Ratanakiri and helps to break the often preconceived ideas by many who have not yet visited the province.

“I want to show that Ratanakiri has changed and is not full of nature anymore,” he says. “Many also think the people wear traditional clothes and so on. Even among the ethnic indigenous people that’s not really the case – only a few of them [wear this] now. All the young people want to wear modern clothes and even in the villages almost all of them wear The Voice Cambodia shirts.”

Woman with Pipe portrays an older Tempouan woman looking straight into the camera, puffing on a homemade pipe. The photo was taken during the final technical evaluation of Delannoy’s project. Due to the time needed to translate from the minority language to Khmer and then to English, there were often times when Delannoy could take very few photographs.

For Woman with Pipe, he simply placed his camera in front of the woman at an upwards angle. He wasn’t actually sure what he was capturing, but the result is a powerful image that has become the face of the exhibition. The handmade pipe the woman smokes is decorated with ornate pink detail, invisible in the black and white photograph.

“I did not know what I was shooting,” Delannoy says. “I just took the photo and she was looking at the camera and she was thinking, ‘What’s this?’”

Back to the Village shows an ethnic Jarai family returning home after picking fruit and vegetables. They carry the produce on their backs in backpacks called “kapas”. Traditionally the kapa is made from bamboo, but with the forest’s decline people have started to use plastic, while continuing the traditional method of construction. Delannoy hopes his exhibition can shed light on Ratanakiri and raise awareness of the help that is needed.

“There are still indigenous people, and the conditions there are very hard. In some of the photos we see sadness on the face. I think we should try to do more to help them – help people to get opportunities and to protect the landscape,” he says.

None of the subjects in Delannoy’s photographs were asked to pose or go to a certain location, and the editing process only involved minor corrections such as adjusting the contrast or cropping.

“All the pictures in the exhibition we can liken to photojournalistic reportage, because it’s really natural.”

Ratanakiri shows at Bophana Centre,
#64 St. 200 until June 16.

Show, don’t tell

Transmissions, currently on show at the Bophana Centre, is a multi-disciplinary exhibition aimed at documenting the memories of Khmer Rouge survivors.

In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh, Transmissions is a part of the Bophana Centre’s nine-month programme Acts of Memory.

On the walls are portraits of relatives with an image of their corresponding elder who survived the Khmer Rouge superimposed on top of them.

Each photo has a written testimony of the most significant memories the survivor had from the Khmer Rouge time. Other walls showcase photos, including many from journalist Elizabeth Becker, from the Khmer Rouge era.

A large television screen shows filmed conversations in which survivors are interviewed by students or young relatives.

“We are the younger generation and we don’t know what happened,” says Chea Sophea, Deputy Director of Bophana Centre.

Sopheap reflects on his own experiences of talking to his parents about the Khmer Rouge era to highlight the importance of the exhibition.

“They would tell you [about the Khmer Rouge] occasionally, but then the questions came and we asked, and when our questions touched them they wouldn’t answer you, because it caused tears,” Sopheap says.

However, once his parents had a few days to think about the question, they were able to answer the question and feel some release.

“It’s good to talk, to share, and then we can learn and avoid something in the future – we can move forward when we know,” Sopheap says.

A large artwork by Leang Seckon takes up half of the exhibition space. Flowering Parachute Skirt is a sculpture largely made of US-dropped bombing parachutes from air raids in Cambodia between 1965 and 1973. The figure wears a skirt made from the parachute material, which is dotted with colourful handmade flowers.

On a large table lies a scene from Rithy Panh’s film, The Missing Picture. Made from clay, the scene depicts daily life under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Miniature clay figures sit under shelters eating, surrounded by trees and piles of corpses.

Sopheap says he likes Panh’s artistic expression, as it is difficult to ask humans to act out a situation that is so difficult to understand.
When speaking to a survivor, Sopheap says he was told he did not understand the true meaning of hunger.

“She pointed to me and said, ‘You don’t understand the meaning of hunger [under the Khmer Rouge]. You don’t understand. Now you are hungry and you can get something to eat; at that time you were just hungry.’”

Sopheap hopes the Transmissions project will not end with the close of the exhibition on March 30.

“I want the transmitting to go on, not only this year but for other years,” he said.

“One person is one memory, 100 people is 100 memories, 1000, 2000 people – then we have many, many different stories.”

Transmissions shows as part of the Acts of Memory programme until Saturday March 30 at Bophana Centre, #64 St. 200.

Mak Remissa: Water for thought

Those even vaguely tuned into the national art scene will be familiar with the work of Mak Remissa, the locally born artist considered by many to be one of the most successful photographers of his generation. It wasn’t long after graduating from Phnom Penh’s Fine Arts School in 1995 that his talent caught the attention of worldwide publications, many at which he has since worked as a photojournalist. At the same time, his fine art photography began exhibiting across Cambodia, Singapore, China, France, Canada, the US, and beyond, recognised for not only its attention to fine detail, but regular themes concerning the environment and conservation. In his latest exhibition, Water is Life, Remissa emphasises the importance of water for animals, vegetation, humans and life on earth.

“This is an idea I have felt strongly about since a long time ago,” Remissa explains. “Cambodia has a lot of rivers, lakes, canals, etc. In the raining season we have plenty of water, but in the dry season people cannot find water for their agriculture and in some places in the countryside the residents are not able to find water to drink. So this series shows the importance of water. We really need it, and the water has a lot of lives in it – you can see them in the pictures.”

The 18 images in the series predominantly centre on a single water-dependent creature – fish, frogs, turtles, rays, and molluscs among them – each secreting or spattered with a luminous and colourful oily liquid, floating in an otherwise fresh, clear pool of water. On first glance, the photographs are pure beauty, with swirling fluorescent liquids creating psychedelic patterns, and resolutions so clear that every water droplet could easily trickle off the canvas at any moment. But on closer inspection and further musing, a certain uneasiness emerges. A frog appears to be less swimming than drowning, suffocated by the toxic-green, oily substance by which it is slowly being engulfed. A conch shell oozes an impossibly organic viscous slime.
Although known most widely for his photography, to generate this simultaneously beautiful, yet unsettling effect, Remissa used a combination of various media to create the series.

“I used oil colors with dead creatures from fresh and sea water. No animals were killed; the animals in the pictures had already died before I had bought them from the market.” Remissa adds slightly superfluously, albeit comfortingly, “Except the people in the pictures – they are alive, just photographic effects only.”

Although Remissa doesn’t necessarily consider himself an activist, environmental themes feature strongly in many of his works, and he believes that artists like himself are in a position in which they can, and should, use their art as a platform to advocate such issues.

“I don’t think I am an environmental activist. As you know, I am an artist, so there are many human issues waiting for me to create art about. For another environmental issue, I created Flamed Forest, a series focusing on forest conservation,” Remissa says. “We are artists. We should use our arts to support important social, political and environmental issues, and I encourage all the artists over the world to participate in these issues. I will also be donating some money made from the sales of this photographic collection to non-profits dedicated to educating and sustaining water resources.”

Beyond stimulating consciousness within the wider artistic community, Remissa hopes to inspire and promote mindfulness among audiences who view his latest exhibition.

“I hope the audiences will rethink about water, as water is very important for people, animals and nature – they cannot live without water. They should keep the water clean and useable forever, everywhere on earth.”

Water is Life by Mak Remissa will show until Sunday June 21 at the Lotus Pond Gallery of The Plantation, #28 St. 184.

The naked truth

Heng Ravuth’s exhibition Innermost II, currently on show at Java Cafe & Gallery, is an exploration of the self and emotion. A continuation of his 2011 exhibition Innermost, Ravuth continues to use himself as the subject of his work, but he says he has added greater detail and more layers to his most recent exhibition.

Presented in mosaic form, each image is made up of small jagged square replicas of the whole image. From a distance it is near impossible to see, but look closer and you can make out the hundreds of miniature images within the painting. The canvases depict big featureless figures in various poses – Ravuth’s use of body language stands out in this exhibition. In the making of Innermost II, Ravuth used a combination of oil paint and photography.

Ravuth’s exhibition seeks to normalise nudity. Though often used in art, nudity continues to be a sensitive and uncomfortable topic in Cambodia. Ravuth says nudity is associated with shame and indignity in Cambodia, and he hopes to contribute to normalising these intimate parts of the body that can cause people to feel awkward and embarrassed. “I want to show everybody that nudity is us, and that everyone is actually nude,” he says.

In his work, Ravuth hopes to capture something a camera cannot. Instead of capturing a fleeting moment, he wants to create an atmosphere, within which feelings are encapsulated. Ravuth graduated from Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in painting, and has chosen to make self-portraiture one of his biggest focuses. His fascination with the portrait style of painting is closely associated with self-expression.

Painting mostly in hues of green, blue, purple and white, Ravuth intentionally distorts the faces and bodies that appear in his work, instead choosing to focus on conveying a feeling through his featureless figures, or attempting to give them an inner personality.

But this feeling or inner character is to be determined by the viewer. Ravuth believes there is an often unnecessary emphasis put on finding the meaning behind an artwork. Rather than telling the viewer what is happening in the picture, or explaining the personal meaning for them, he believes “mystery and curiosity can be more powerful,” and he prefers to let these traits take over: “I want to make people find the meaning behind the painting themselves; I don’t want to change people’s thinking.”

For Ravuth, another benefit of not telling the audience the meaning behind his work is getting to watch people’s reactions as they try to decipher what lies before them.

“I’m more interested in capturing emotion than having a message in my work. I’m more excited to see people’s emotion when they see my work.”

Innermost II is showing at Java Café & Gallery until Sunday April 26.

Birds of a feather

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.”

Psychedelic mythology

Stepping into Sammaki Gallery’s new solo exhibition we are transported into the vivid imagination of Battambang based artist Ot Veasna. Given Veasna is deaf, unable to write, and knows only limited sign language, we rely on his boundless creativity for a peak behind his amiable but silent demeanor.

Veasna’s chimeras and multi-faced creatures are playful, highly fantastical, and definitely merit a visit. At first read, Veasna’s work is a cross between Salvador Dali’s surrealist paintings and George Dunning’s (famous for animating and directing The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine) psychedelic animations. The fantastical chimeras possess a deep child-like sense of wonder and imagination that too many of us are slowly taught to confuse with being childish. Like Dunning’s work, the creatures appear almost goofy and largely benevolent in nature.

Of course, Cambodia possesses a long history of mythical creatures embodied by multiple animals and extra limbs, far removed from Western artists and traditions. For example, the Hindu deity Vishnu is featured prominently at Angkor Wat, regularly with numerous arms. Gajasimha, a mythical cross of an elephant head and lion body is common throughout South East Asian mythology and is even featured on the Royal Arms of Cambodia. Surely, these and many more like them were early influences on Veasna’s internal mythology.

The clean works are endlessly imaginative but, in terms of emotion, very simple. Furthermore, the extent to which Veasna has constructed his own complete mythology is unclear. Are these beings part of a master narrative with hierarchies, epics or morals? We can only wonder. Is this is by fault or because of Veasna’s inability to fully communicate to us in words?

In the flyers and posters advertising the exhibition, Sammaki Gallery features The Child, and for good reason. The painting is unique for the show in that the face takes up almost the entirety of the painting. With two tears running down the face and arms reaching to the heavens The Child is the only painting on display with any discernable emotion.

However, the work that immediately catches attention, and remains a favorite, is Elephant. The remixed Gajasimha is an elephant head morphing into a mermaid, then into a Janus-head of an alligator and man. The vivid red to pink background makes its profoundly bizarre subjects pop.

That Veasna currently has two solo exhibitions (his work was already being displayed at Lotus Bar & Gallery) is testament to his zeal for painting and quality of work. While it is awkward that Sammaki Gallery decided to simultaneously exhibit Veasna during Lotus Bar & Gallery’s show (the galleries are 2.5 blocks away on the same road) how many artists are producing two solo show’s worth of quality work every year?

Veasna’s new solo show runs through to Wednesday March 25. at Sammaki Gallery, Battambang.

Changing Exchange

After a long scarcity of cultural exchange between Bangkok and Phnom Penh, it seems like the two cities have found a common currency. Rates of Exchange, Un-Compared is a six-month collaborative project hosted by Sa Sa Bassac gallery in which six Thai and three Cambodian artists were invited to partake in discussions, symposiums and residencies. As well as creating the resulting exhibition, the project aimed to create a dialogue between artists from the two capital cities.

The exhibition curators, Roger Nelson and Brian Curtin, discouraged comparative frameworks – instead, the artists also examine the ways in which we talk about nationality, history and geography.

“It seemed as though most artists were so used to curators presenting them with a ‘theme’ to ‘respond to,’” Nelson says. “I think that can often be quite a problematic idea, so it confirmed for me that this project was a worthwhile experiment. We were lucky to work with people who are bursting with exciting ideas, and who thrive on the chance to share those ideas, and learn from the different thinking and practices of others.”

For this show, the process was just as valuable as the result. “The artists, curators, researchers and spaces involved in the project made the connections happen, and it was really nice to watch that unfold,” Nelson continues. “The conversations really varied from artist to artist. Some artists were interested in talking about the similarities and differences in Thailand and Cambodia, both past and present – in a sense, comparing the two cities and nations. Other artists were more interested in talking about the abstract idea of thinking about comparison as a mode of analysis.”

Instead of working around a theme, the show largely defines itself in its own terms with a mishmash of multi-textured playfulness.

Delicate processes, violent histories

Recurring ideas create internal echoes within the gallery. On one wall, Orawan Arunrak has hung a jacket belonging to her late godfather, a soldier deployed to protect Cambodian refugees after the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed. The artist has lovingly stitched the camouflage outlines with gold thread – an act of deification, symbolic of family and national ties.

On the other side of the gallery, Tada Hengsapkul’s video installation mirrors Arunrak’s piece: it shows a close-up of the soft folds of an American soldier’s jacket from the ‘60s. American military presence during that era is still officially denied by Thailand – despite the eyewitness memories of local people, and physical evidence of jackets such as these.

Hengsapkul’s installation shows the image of the jacket woozily dissolving into yellow and purple streaks as it is chemically cleansed from the screen – just as it has been cleansed from Thailand’s historical records. As with Arunrak, the slow, delicate process he has employed is at odds with the artefact itself, which is evidence of the two countries’ traumatic history of war.

“Local history is interesting and seems even more important than national history, which was written and rewritten by governments, and which shows the government controls people with its power,” Hengsapkul says. “I think most artists don’t see its significance, lost in the repeated words created by the government. If no one talks about it, everything will slowly and gradually disappear, and nobody’s going to even notice it. Moreover, we can learn from mistakes in many dimensions of social structure through history.”

Unexpected mediums

The politicised symbol of the jacket is repeated again by Thai artist Jakkai Siributr, but this time in the context of the monolithic garment industry. Siributr’s installation Fast Fashion consists of a set of H&M jackets embroidered with slogans and scenes from Cambodian garment protests. The painstaking detail and care given to each garment is in itself a protest against cheap, throwaway fashion.

It’s hard not to read his piece as a twist on the trend of “reclaimed fashion” – his work is not only recycling clothes, but literally reclaiming them as Cambodian products, with their palimpsests of traditional Yantra texts and scenes of recent political strife. In a further sense, they function as portraits of the unseen artists of the pieces: the factory workers who made them.

Indeed, the exhibition explores unexpected mediums with a beguiling lightness of touch. Even the most apparently conventional pieces, such as the two dark canvases by Imhathai Suwatthanasilp are marked with delicate, contoured patterns, which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be made with human hair.

A sheet of newspaper lies on the floor, as if it blew there accidentally. This, too, reveals an uncanny surprise as it twitches and moves mechanically. The artist, Makha Sanewong Na Ayuthaya, is known for his un-still lives, animating everyday objects, such as paint buckets, toothpaste tubes and bottle caps. Aside from producing the visceral discomfort that comes from seeing an ordinarily still object animated, the artist aims to jolt us from our blindness to functional objects by making them into kinetic sculptures.

Ayuthaya’s piece in Sa Sa Bassac, simply titled Newspaper, isn’t just questioning the hierarchy of function over form. On the front page of the newspaper is a story on the country’s most recent coup – the 19th in Thailand’s recent history – while the back page holds an ad for a SIM card and a promotion for watching free movies. The Thai media distracts people from the precarious reality of their political situation; Newspaper scuttles discarded, cockroach-like on the ground.

Exploration, conversation

Phnom Penh’s geography is thoroughly travelled. Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang examines the cities socio-political issues, with a photo series of traditional fighters posing in front of Phnom Penh’s violently changing skylines. Kanitha Tith, an artist who has so far focused on performance art, shows video work for the first time. Exploring the concepts of time and familiarity, the video is a fragmented tour of Phnom Penh’s White Building, which dissolves from the everyday to inky ambiguity as night falls in its long corridors. Pen Sereypagna’s maps of Phnom Penh hang on the wall and across the floor. People have filled in places and things that they would like to see in the city. Unsurprisingly, their map looks very different from the spate of satellite cities and high rises that is on the official city plan.

Aside from the artworks, what else did the project create? “[The] whole process really made me realise that conversations are the most valuable part of any creative exchange,” Nelson says. “Artists getting to know each other, talking to each other about their work, their cities, their lives and everything else. The nature of these kinds of dialogues is unpredictable and the results can be very exciting in terms of creative practice.”

Phnom Penh and Bangkok may remain un-compared, but the project has certainly created exciting collaborations and artworks, as well as inviting much-needed new curatorial concepts into Phnom Penh’s galleries.

Rates of Exchange, Un-compared runs until Sunday March 8 at Sa Sa Bassac gallery, #18E2 Sothearos Blvd.

Kim Hak: Missing memories

Artist Kim Hak explores the phenomenon of memory in his most recent exhibitions throughout the city.

Memory: a recollection of the past; the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information; the length of time over which a person or event continues to be remembered; the theme of artist Kim Hak’s work.

Hak currently has multiple exhibitions on display, both centering on memory. Alive, showing at the French Institute, involves an array of objects used during the Khmer Rouge regime – an old army canteen that belonged to his father; a metal breakfast bowl still used every morning by the owner today – to unearth the memories of those who survived the rule, the 40-year anniversary of which falls on April 17 this year.

The other, showing at Java Cafe & Gallery, titled Unity, is an intimate portrayal of a country coming together to grieve and remember King Sihanouk, who died on October 15, 2012. Instead of focusing on the ceremony taking place, Hak turned his camera to the people and captured their moments of reflection.

Hak hasn’t had any formal photography training. When he finished high school in 1998, studying photography wasn’t even an option – no courses were available. He remembers the exact happenings that sparked his desire to become a photographer.

In 1990, when moving from one house in Phnom Penh to another, the chaos that comes with packing uncovered an old box of black and white family photos. He spent all night sifting through the photographs and looking at the faces they had encapsulated. Hak would have been 9 or 10 years old at the time, and he remembers realising the link between photography and memory.

When speaking with the owners of the items he photographed for Alive, Hak expected the conversations to be painful and hard, but he found the tone to be bittersweet. A kettle was the inspiration for the exhibition. It has been in Kim’s family since before the time of the Khmer Rouge. It is old and worn but his mother still uses it every day. Hak said she laughed as she talked about the kettle’s history. During the regime his father became very ill and his mother cooked a chicken in the kettle for him to help build his strength. At the time, people were not allowed to eat such luxurious food items, and his father was so afraid of being found out that he didn’t dare eat it.

“I learned that, for them, it is kind of bittersweet. It’s bitter, but it’s sweet that they still remember. They’re lucky they survived and can still share with us,” Hak said.

The most difficult part of Hak’s Alive project is finding the objects; not much remains from before the Khmer Rouge regime. By April 17, he hopes to have 40 images to correlate with the 40-year anniversary. The exhibition is presented in a timeline, but there is a certain element missing: the people who fled to the borders and made their way to different countries. Hak hopes to make contact with some of these people and discover the precious objects they took with them.

It has now been almost 40 years since the Khmer Rouge rule, and Hak points out that some of the survivors have already died. He hopes to publish a photo book to commemorate the Khmer Rouge survivors and their memories.

“My idea is to let the objects dig out the memory and then document it and write it down. Maybe publish a photo book so the information and the memory will be alive, so it can be passed from the old people to the young generation.”

Urban escapes

In his spare time between writing his novel, composing music, playing in his band and creating otherworldly paintings and drawings, artistic mastermind Conrad Keely has taken to curating. On Wednesday January 28, Keely opened his latest exhibition at Show Box, The City, featuring works from a range of Phnom Penh-based artists, including himself, Peter Klashorst, David Holliday, Kosal Khiev and more.

While the title may seem relatively self-explanatory, this group show explores themes of the city on a multitude of levels, delving into the psychology of urbanity, exploring the reciprocal relationship between artistic design and functional architecture, and provoking questions of globalisation and sustainability.

Keely says that he was inspired by the idea of artists representing cities through art, as he believes “There’s a beauty in the ugly of cities.” He explains, “There’s something about the fact that we’ve created this thing that’s unnatural. Its function has nothing to do with art – it began completely through commerce. Tribal units had to trade with other cities, then we got agriculture and we had a reason to all be in one place. The beautification of the city grew out of the necessity to live together. So that aspect of urban space and architecture fascinates me. The psychology of urban spaces is something that really drew me to Phnom Penh rather than elsewhere.”

Keely insists that naming and basing the exhibition on a term that is in itself somewhat ambiguous was a key point of the show. Each artist was asked to express what “the city” meant to them through their own diverse and unbounded styles, as audiences are encouraged to question the obscurity of urbanity as a concept.

Keely describes his own perception of the theme as an ongoing social experiment. “As animals or tribal groups, we have this small radius of people with whom we interact, are related, and are our friends. But cities put us in this place where all these tribes, groups and families are just stuck together, often piled on top of each other. That’s kind of an experiment. Will this work long-term? How big do these cities get? We really don’t know.”

These notions are explored in his own exhibited work, which includes a watercolour of an imagined antebellum town, surrounded by the smog-filled haze of an ominously encroaching metropolis. Another is a concept design of a stacked bucolic city; an amalgamation of rural and urban contrasts. Alongside these, artist David Holliday presents a series of kaleidoscopic, highly saturated photo collages of Phnom Penh, while Peter Klashurst, a prolific and often controversial neo-expressionist artist, reflects his urban experience through an intimate portrait of a bargirl.

While the collection of artistic interpretations are incredibly diverse and ostensibly beautiful, their striking aesthetics belie a deeper, darker undercurrent that flows undeniably throughout the exhibition; a silent but ominous question mark over the future implications of Phnom Penh’s exponential expansion.

Keely, a self-declared optimist, points to sustainable development as the solution, and artists as the pioneers. “Sustainability is the future of urban spaces globally. It’s a new concept; cities were never supposed to be sustainable. They were supposed to consume, to come into a landscape and tame it. Now we’re having to redefine that. And I think it’s going to be artists who will be at the forefront of imagining what a sustainable city can be. Art often informs reality. If we want to imply how cities are going to look and what they’re going to become, we will need the vision of artists. I’ve seen future concept designs – map paintings for films and stuff. If that’s what we have to look forward to then it might not be that dystopian, post-apocalyptic Mad Max thing that’s often portrayed. It could actually be something of great beauty and wonder.”

WHO: Various local artists
WHAT: The City, group exhibition
WHEN: Now through February 10
WHERE: Show Box, #11 Street 330
WHY: Your future house may be showcased

Category: Art