CAMBODIAN CONTEMPORARY ART COMES OF AGE
Abstract expressionism, which came of age in New York in the 1950s, is alive and well — in Cambodia. Crowds gather regularly in the provincial town of Battambang to witness “live painting” by students who fling colours, glitter, glue, paper scraps and even metal chains onto large public canvases.
And this year, representatives from a nation that has only two art schools, offering no formal courses on Western traditions, a single operating lithography press, and not one serious commercial gallery, have been invited for the first time to both the Venice Biennale and Germany’s equally prestigious Documenta.
At the German show, a member of Phnom Penh’s Art Rebels collective will be screening his provocative videos — some documenting the artist pouring buckets of sand over his head beside tropical lakes choked by landfill.
“We try to have our own Cambodian identity, yet explode with the rest of the world,” said Leang Seckon, a Renaissance man who dances, and designs costumes, jewellery, traditional temple architecture, and sculptures such as a floating, twokilometre-long Naga snake made out of recycled plastic bottles.
He also produces large paintings that command as much as US$50,000, mixing images of Khmer statuary with Jackie Kennedy, WiFi symbols and construction sites. “Artists have to be the ones who fly with their imaginations and see everything in society below,” he said.
That Cambodia has any visual output at all is something of a miracle, considering that an estimated 90% of the country’s working artists were targeted for extermination during the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79.
“Even in 2005, there was no work at all,” said Nico Mesterharm, a German filmmaker who runs Phnom Penh’s Meta House gallery. “But now people know that exoticism is not enough — they want to be shown not just because they are Cambodian but because they are good.”
Despite ongoing financial and cultural obstacles, Cambodian contemporary art is coming of age, making its mark on international art sales while also tackling national development issues.
“There was not one Cambodian in the Asia-Pacific Triennale for the first 18 years,” said Erin Gleeson, head of Sa Sa Bassac gallery (also home to the only library of contemporary art) and a promoter of local art for nearly two decades. “Then, in 2013, a lot of excitement was created by the Season of Cambodia festival, staged in New York.
“But now the scene has matured. Concentrating on the environment, corruption and connection to nature, today’s emerging artists are like philosophers, people who think deeply — only they do it through means other than writing.”
This small, if fiercely devoted younger generation, are slowly moving beyond foreign sponsorship — and, more importantly, also freeing themselves from repeating stereotypical memorialising of the genocidal past.
“The pressure of our history breeds creativity,” said Siem Reap-based conceptual artist Svay Sareth. “But please don’t put my work in a box, we’ll all be in a coffin later.”
Sareth, who discovered his love of drawing during 13 years in a refugee camp, said: “Sometimes art is reflection, sometimes provocation. But only through this path do we find freedom without limits.”
It is noteworthy that, in a place where, in Gleeson’s words, “just having a video camera is a political act,” censorship in the visual arts has been minimal. So is arts funding. But many artists also see hope in younger, foreign-educated members of Cambodia’s elite becoming patrons and commissioning daring works to decorate new luxury hotels — such as the Jackson Pollock-like smears of Battambang’s Pen Robit.
The country’s newest experiments in art incubation are within walking distance of Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge interrogation centre turned Torture Museum. Meta Moeng, trained in business management, has just opened “My Space” in a two-storey, wooden longhouse down a back alley. Here, art students network, hold workshops and research while the upstairs, once refurbished, will be offered for residencies to artists.
Meanwhile, the Art Rebels — Stiev Selapak in Khmer — are setting up shop nearby after nearly a decade of offering classes, talks and residencies in the cramped surroundings of the so-called White Building. Once a focus for craftsmen and performers, this initial planned modern development from the 1960s stood near the National Theatre, later burned down.
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, artists returned to squat in the slum-like ruins, still a source of controversy as a Japanese developer copes with how to best relocate or compensate angry residents.
At the same time, Cambodia’s National Gallery, largely housing Angkor Wat relics, recently opened a single room to a show called “reBIRTH reVITALISE reGENERATION” — with more realistic works