Fifteen years ago, Cambodian art was virtually non-existent, with only
a handful of painters practicing their trade.
These days, though, the country's tempo is shifting.
Cambodia has moved from a country ravaged by war to one of the
region's top tourist destinations with a fledgling manufacturing base,
and its evolving art scene is growing up.
Artists are becoming more in tune with a rapidly normalizing society,
and local artists are fusing Cambodian traditions with the modern, and
borrowing ideas from abroad.
This has allowed them to move away from rigid, two-dimensional
depictions of temples and farmers working their rice fields, which
were standard fare before the country's 30-year war.
English sculptor Sasha Constable has lived in Cambodia for a decade,
where she has been prominent on the local arts scene.
"The main difference over the past 10 years is that artists are
becoming more experimental with their use of different materials and
concepts," she says. "There are also a number of artists that have
lived abroad working as artist in residence (France, New York, China
to name a few places) so outside influences are creeping in too."
Her sentiments were echoed by Nico Mesterharm, director of the Meta
House Art Gallery in Phnom Penh.
Mesterharm says that Cambodian art was once defined by artists who did
little more than depict traditional motifs to be sold to the odd
tourist for a few dollars.
However, the likes of You Khin and Van Nath, survivor of the infamous
S21 extermination camp who found fame through his paintings of torture
and death, have changed much of that.
Mesterharm notes that Cambodia's art scene began to change in 2005,
when about 25 local artists started a project called Visual Arts Open,
sparking the move towards contemporary arts and away from landscapes,
portraits and the Khmer Rouge.
"This was somehow the beginning of a young Cambodian contemporary arts
scene," he says.
Traditionally, Cambodian artists are trained at the Fine Arts School
in Phnom Penh or in Battambang, 300 kilometers west of the capital.
Among them was Chhim Sothy, whose paintings fetch up to $3,000 each
and have been exhibited across Asia, Europe and the United States. He
says the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge dominated his early work.
Buddhism was also a major influence, but recently he has turned to
other sources of inspiration.
"I like more contemporary art or abstract art like Picasso, William
Kooning, Gauguin or van Gough, I like this style," he said during an
exhibition at the Lost Room in Phnom Penh.
He also likens himself to a monk in search of wisdom.
"Now, I've changed a lot. My work is more about the family, about the
people around me, sometimes abstract, sometimes it's thinking about
real life."
He mixes mythical characters from Hindu poems with man as an explorer
of life, painting oil on canvas with many shades of green, blues and
lots of red, especially in his nudes which aren't necessarily erotic
but relate more to urban family life. Mother and child are constant
themes.
"I'm very happy because I have developed a lot," he says.
According to Constable, the resurgence and fusion of local classical
art with outside contemporary influences is changing the cultural
landscape. Film, dance and music have also seen a re-awakening. More
galleries are opening.
"Also there are now a number of people and institutions collecting
contemporary Cambodian art, private collectors but also the Singapore
Museum of Art for example. There's a large exhibition planned for 2013
in the U.S. which will include visual arts as well as dance and a
conference element."
Among the new wave there are also the more outrageous.
Oeur Sokuntevy enjoys tackling traditional Khmer values that hold
strong dictates for women, expectations that promote strict morals,
marriage and children.
Described by one critic as the 'trippiest' artist in the country,
Tevy, as she's known, uses animals instead of people. One painting has
a muscle-bound gay elephant tending a monkey, a satirical send-up of
Cambodia's middle class women and their indulgences such as
hairdressers and make-up, once spurned as Western vices by Cambodia's
former communist leaders.
"I started drawing my family and friends around me and people in
Cambodia. Then I supplemented the people with animals because we are
all related and we all live in the same community," she says.
Younger artists normally fetch between $450 and $800 a painting, but
Mesterharm says artists still need to expand, and remain reluctant to
focus on social issues in a country notorious for poverty and
corruption. Instead, there's a tendency to paint only what is
considered beautiful.
"Most of the art is quite colorful, people try to work with different
materials. They work in the fields of sculpture, painting and
photography," he says. "They also try to do something, which is
Cambodian. They try to find their own identity. Only if they do so
they will also find a market because this is what this scene still
lacks – a local market and an international market."
While Cambodian art still needs a wider market and broader acceptance,
its supporters insist a great deal has already been achieved given
most of the capital's intelligentsia were slaughtered after the Khmer
Rouge seized the country in 1975 and emptied the cities of their
people.
Thousands more were among the millions who perished in forced labor
camps and the years of war that followed. But now, as a new generation
untainted by conflict emerges, the artists are finally leaving their
mark on the country's cultural landscape.
By Luke Hunt
January 19, 2012
http://the-diplomat.com/sport-culture/2012/01/19/cambodian-art-blossoms/
