Cambodia's hidden world of contemporary art

As the Khmer Rouge trial in Cambodia belatedly begins to reap results, the British art gallery Rossi & Rossi has taken the bold step of exhibiting one of the country’s leading artists, Leang Seckon, from tomorrow until 29th April.

Seckon's work has been hailed for its wit and audacity in far-flung corners of the world—he has been shown in Norway, Japan, Hong Kong and the USA—but this is his first solo exhibition in Europe. Using mixed media and collage, he has a strong but varied narrative focus: his sexuality, his early artistic education, life as a child under the Khmer Rouge and his love of 1960s Cambodian pop icons. One of his installations is a soldier assembled from the paraphernalia of Cambodia’s numerous wars, using French rifles, American helmets and even Khmer Rouge shoes made from rubber tires. He also uses kbach, the Khmer word for traditional ornaments which can refer to many things, from the thousands of hand gestures in classical dance to the ornaments on Angkorian temples.



There are probably only around 50 working artists in Cambodia—out of a population of 14m. Encouraged by a handful of new galleries in the capital Phnom Penh, a few have emerged as exciting young talents and are now able to command solo shows in top international galleries and have their work featured in biennales. Sopheap Pich’s amoeba-like sculptures in bamboo and rattan were going for $35,000 at New York’s Tyler Rollins gallery last year, while a commission for a university in Saudi Arabia netted him $50,000, a world record for a Cambodian artist. Less well known but as promising is the French-trained Denis Min-Kim, whose exquisite Chinese ink drawings of elderly Cambodians throw a welcome spotlight on a long suffering minority and the burden of memory they carry.

For 20 years after a civil war that annihilated a third of the population, Cambodian artists were almost exclusively concerned with survival, which at that time meant tourism. However, a significant few have increasingly found the courage to ditch the ubiquitous images of Angkor Wat and apsara dancers (Cambodia's traditional dance form) in the pursuit of more serious, personal artistic ambitions, investigating their own lives and surroundings.

In one sense, the country’s isolation has been its strength. Artists such as Seckon combine traditional symbolism with autobiographical imagery, part of a process of coming to terms with decades of civil war, corruption, and the loss of cultural heritage. He was also the first Cambodian artist to show an interest in the environment, with the 2008 "Rubbish Project"’ a 225 metre long naga (a deity in snake form) made from 160 kg of recycled plastic, mostly bags dumped in the Siem Reap river.

“My art has many messages that comment on the realities around us”, says Seckon. “I don’t want to offend but I want to raise topical issues, address questions that should be asked. I want my art to help bring peace and balance to the world.”