Reflections (without the expectations)

"A Traffic Police Man" by Lim Sokchalina. 

Throughout my independent study class, my knowledge about Cambodia has expanded leaps and bounds. Although I do believe that going to a country is the best way to learn, Cambodia does a great job at covering up the country's realities with a facade of romantically verdant rice fields and sandstone temples. I am still in shock about my dis-knowledge (ignorance, but I like to think that I was not totally ignorant) of the country before this course. I have learned a lot more about the Khmer Rouge, French colonialism, and the current state of Cambodian political affairs today. I have looked at contemporary art in Cambodia and have realized how we, the West, impose this sort of image of what is supposed to be Cambodian art and Cambodia as a whole. The five plus films I have watched, two books I have read, museum exhibitions and talks I have attended, and more JSTOR articles than I can know have given me mixed media filled insight.

In this post as well I was planning on describing my expectations for this summer, but I am not going to do this. One of the main teachings of Buddhism says that expectations are one of the greatest sources of suffering and can lead to unhappiness. Letting go to expectations makes you a freer person. I am going to be living in a rural village about 15 kilometers outside of Siem Reap for at least one month, but rather than form expectations, I am just going to go for it. Rather than wonder how I am going to shower or more pertinently, exactly what I want to get out of this summer, I am going to go with the flow. By creating an expectation, I might try to cater my experience to fulfill this expectation, rather than wait and see what happens. This is not to say that I will have no ambition, but rather I do not want a long list of objectives. I can say this: I hope to learn, I hope to do something meaningful, and I hope to make a connection to the place.

The Perils of Activism and Critical Media in Cambodia

Freedom of press country by country. Some maps vary, for example, one shows
Canada as on par with Sweden, while another shows Burma as being on par
with Thailand.

There is no doubt that Cambodia does not boast the same freedom of speech laws that I, living in the United States, can benefit from. I can write critically about Barack Obama and ObamaCare, and not worry that someone will come after me for doing so. This, needless to say, is not the case in Cambodia. Cambodian journalists live in constant fear of saying or writing something wrong, especially because much of the media in Cambodia are owned by Hun Sen's ruling party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). In fact, "spreading false information or insulting public officials," is cause for imprisonment (Cambodia Profile). It is important to note, however, that those media do not wholly include the internet, seeing as only a reported 663,000 Cambodian had access (even if inconsistent) to the internet in June 2012 (Cambodia Profile). This is not to say that government defamation on the internet is free game, but that the internet is not a widely used tool in Cambodia as of late. That being said, the BBC reports a 2012 decree banning any internet cafes from opening up near schools, and that committing crimes that might threaten national security or tradition on the internet is forbidden. The fear behind any freedom of speech spreads beyond journalists and into other activism sectors of Cambodian society.

The pro-government daily Koh Santepheap newspaper
homepage screenshot.

The most famous recent case of an imprisoned Khmer journalist is Mam Sonado, a land rights activist, the president of a pro-democracy movement, and radio host on of the only station that criticized Hun Sen's government. He was charged for supposedly starting a rebellion and accused specifically of instigating villagers in Kratie, Cambodia, to form their own state independent of Cambodia--an accusation that Sonado denies. Although there were clashes between the government and Kratie villagers due to the government taking away their land, Sonado was not involved (Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'). The protests in Kratie escalated because the police shot and killed a fifteen-year-old girl protesting. From what I have read and seen about Cambodia, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Sonado was sentenced to twenty years in prison, something that human rights groups call outrageous, yet as he left the court, he told press: "I am happy that I have helped the nation" (Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'). In March, however, he was released after  indirect pressure from the United Nations. But not all of the journalists and activists in Cambodia have the U.N. at their side.

In September 2012, an environmental activist and journalist named Hang Serei Oudom was brutally killed (at the mercy of axe blows to his head) and found in the trunk of his car by police (Gleensdale). Oudom was known to write stories about the illegal logging of Cambodian timber for luxury corporations--stories the the government would prefer that people do not know about.  Western journalists are not exempt to the government's watchful eye either. There have been reports of harassment at English language newspapers, and in 1997, a Khmer-Canadian photographer was killed. A Canadian journalist was with Oudom when we was brutally killed as well; however, she was spared.

Memorial Service advertisement for Chea
Vichea

Bradley Cox's film Who Killed Chea Vichea? discusses the human rights abuses in Cambodia in relation to the injustice of Chea Vichea's murder and trial. Vichea, Cambodia's former Free Trade Union president, was assassinated in 2004 on Chinese New Year in broad daylight. Six months before he received a text message that he would be killed, but he persevered in his political and activist work. Vichea protected garment workers and promoted strikes and demonstrations to increase minimum wage and improve worker conditions. Today, the U.S. receives $2 billion in garments from Cambodia, while the 250,000 Cambodians working in the garment industry make $0.28 an hour on average, leading to a $45 monthly salary. The 250,000 Cambodians working in the industry support an estimated 750,000 other Cambodians, meaning that the garment industry in Cambodia buttresses one million people (7% of the population). Sam Rainsy, the politician in stark opposition to Hun Sen and the CPP, supported Vichea and human rights (although, Joel Brinkley's book Cambodia's Curse is more critical of Rainsy than the film). The CPP today have a lock on power and control basically everything about the police, military, and public expenditure (or rather, lack there of).

After Vichea's death, nobody was arrested. The government did not do anything. In fact, Hun Sen was astonished that people wanted him to resign because when 9/11 happened in the United States, George Bush was not immediately ousted (of course, the contexts were completely different as only a few people believe Bush was at fault for the attacks--which he was not. This only proves Hun Sen's madness). Human rights groups and international donors--the latter on which Cambodia relies heavily--pressed for justice in the Vichea case. The police then released a drawing of the man they said the one witness, a Phnom Penh shopkeeper named Va Sothy, described as the murderer (after seeking asylum in Thailand and then the U.S., Sothy denies ever speaking to the police). 48 hours later, the police had arrested two men, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, arrested. But these men did not commit the murder, and as Rainsy said, the government just "had to arrest somebody for the show."

Who Killed Chea Vichea?

A few days before Vichea's murder, Samnang's mother brought a photo of Samnang to the police station to claim she was disowning him because he owed some money to a pharmaceutical company, and she did not want her house taken from her to repay her son's debt. Oeun had a one-time-business-partner Din Doeun who reported him for stealing money, around the same time Vichea was killed as well. Thus, both of the names and photo were easy for the Cambodian police to use to arrest somebody. The head police said they admitted to the crime and were guilty; however, footage shows both men crying, screaming "Let the earth swallow me whole," "Shoot me in the mouth and let me die if I did it," and about the Cambodian police, "They can make white black." Later, former police officials admitted that there were two undercover police on the scene directly after the murder acting as journalists, and the police were not strict about protecting potential forensic evidence from the public.

Who Killed Chea Vichea? Poster

Watching these men crying in unfathomable amounts of distress was inexplicably heart-wrenching. They were arrested without proof. Although he said that he was threatened and coerced into it, Samnang signed a confession saying he was guilty. Samnang actually had dozens of alibis that he was in a village, Neak Long, forty kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Oeun maintained his innocence, and friends at the Chinese New Year party he claimed to be attending would not come forward with any alibi information unless they were allowed to leave the country, because "in Cambodia, if you know things, you can die." At court when both Samnang and Oeun were sentenced to twenty years in prison, they screamed and cried when leaving, asking, for the "King Father" (the late King Sihanouk) or "international guests" to do something becuase "this is injustice." Relatives and friends screamed as the police van took the two away--that they should be given poison so they can kill themselves, and one of the mothers asked for the police to just let her son "die tomorrow." Human rights groups insisted that the wrong men had been convicted. In Cambodia, only the police and military have guns, meaning it was the police or military, controlled by the government, that killed Vichea.

According to an old police officer living France, Cambodia's police force is "as powerful as God." They are also known to torture prisoners, similar to S-21 and the political prisoners of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, one officer (filmed privately through a wall) said that feeding corpses to crocodiles was a common practice. Indeed: "A Cambodian's life is worth the same as a chicken's...a French dog is worth more."A former judge told Cox that not only are many judges not properly educated in the legal systems (part of the Khmer Rouge's educational legacy), but also that "there isn't a single judge who is innocent" from the CPP.

On the part of the elite, there is no want to change the current Hun Sen dominated system--while many activist groups believe there might be. The CPP and its high ranking members can do whatever they want, including quash any opposition. Before the 2003 elections, there were a lot of high profile killings: a judge, a politically active monk, and an opposition advisor. Shortly after the highly contested elections (that were not resolved for nearly a year), a journalist was killed. And then Vichea. According to Rainsy, the government "will kill any secondary target." The message: accept Hun Sen or die.

Vichea's brother in part of the film castigates the U.S. and U.K. governments for not caring about human rights abuses, and in fact claiming that human rights in Cambodia have improved. But at the end of the day, as one of the international workers put it: The U.S. just does not care enough, and they have more important things attending to their interests than a small country. It does not bother them that they ravished the country in the 1970s leading Cambodia to disarray, genocide, and injustice (and a host of other problems).

Samnang (left) and Oeun at their appeals trial on
November 7, 2012.

At the end, the filmmakers tell where the main players are today. In fact, some of the policemen involved in the case have died (Hok Lundy in 2008 in a "mysterious" helicopter fire) or are in prison themselves (such as Heng Pov, once Hun Sen's "right hand man" is a victim of "political infighting"). Both Oeun and Samnang were provisionally released on December 31, 2008, but then on December 27, 2012 were re-sentenced even after King Sihanouk said they were innocent, and Heng Pov said so also. It is a widely held belief that Samnang and Oeun are the unfortunate scapegoats. No one knows for sure who killed Chea Vichea, but the killing is almost certainly (although I will not say 100% in a legal case as such) connected to Hun Sen.

And what about the activists who did not attract this much media attention?

Works Cited:
"Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'" BBC. 1 Oct. 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19783123

"Cambodia Profile." BBC. 21 Feb. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13006543 Web.

Gleensdale, Roy. "Cambodian Journalist Murdered." The Guardian. 12 Sept. 2012. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/sep/12/journalist-safety-cambodia Web.

Who Killed Chea Vichea? Cox, Bradley Dir. Independent Television Service, 2010. Film.

Cambodia: Colonial Postcard Images

The postcard I bought for myself in Cambodia

As I discussed toward the end of my last post, Nicola Cooper analyzes French tourism trends in her book France in Indochina Colonial Encounters. She discovered colonial rhetoric in multiple advertisements for Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) travel, while there is little tourism adverts for other former, and more settled, French colonies like Algeria (205). She suspects that a collective colonial amnesia exists in France about Indochina, as opposed to Algeria (205). The colonial buildings today evoke a sense of “a time lost” for many people, namely French as Cooper argues, and all over Siem Reap, one can buy postcards evoking this "romantic" colonial period. I still ask: What makes Indochina so romantic and exotic? Is it that it was so far? Far enough to forget an exploitative colonial legacy through aesthetically pleasing and picturesque landscape? 

I bought this postcard (right, above) of an old Cambodian colonial map while in Siem Reap in December 2009. The postcard is sprinkled with archetypal projected images of Cambodia, with elephants palm trees, and peasants. Indeed, the three Cambodians at the right of postcard are either peasant or great Apsara dancers--still what we consider Cambodians to be today. What is this obsession we have? All supposed neo-whatever implications aside, the postcard is aesthetically pleasing. The colors are bright, the map is well detailed with verdant greens and ochre. It is, in a word, pretty.

A postcard that I sent my mom while in Cambodia, December 2009

Tintin (Tintin in French and English; Kuifje in Dutch), the Belgium cartoon character, is known for traveling all over the world. In the Comic Museum in Brussels, one area focuses specifically on Tintin and his universality, or rather put into their languages: “Tintin est tout le monde!/Kuifje ist iedereen!/Tintin is everyone in all of the world!" The recognisable character Tintin can be young or old, European or African, solider or sailor, and more depending on the situation and the narrative the author tells. “Si Tintin peut être tout le monde, Tintin peut être toi!/Indien Kuifje iedereen kan zijn, kan Kuifje ook jou zijn!/If Tintin is everyone in all the world, Tintin can also be you!”, signifying how Tintin is meant to become every person, even the reader. He is an iconic character that all people can relate to no matter the situation.  But can he really be every person (well, as a cartoon yes but theoretically as a person?)? Although he technically never officially made it to Indochina, there are fake Tintin cartoons and references throughout the tourist markets in Siem Reap. When I saw this postcard (left), I loved it, bought about four, and sent them to family members and friends. I am not sure why, but this postcard is ingrained in my mind as a symbol of Europeans (whites) in Asia exemplifying ancient tradition and attempting to imitate it in a jovial, touristic manner. I am not actually completely sure what to make of it, but wish to learn more and form my thoughts more thoroughly about colonial cartoons (although this one is more modern) and their meaning (or, perhaps I am reading too much into it).

(Please excuse the inconclusive nature of this post.)

Works Cited:
Cooper, Nicola. France in Indochina Colonial Encounters. New York, New York: Berg Press, 2001. Print.

Indochina: Reign and Legacy

French Indochina map. 

This week I watched director Rithy Panh’s The Seawall and read selected passages from France and “Indochina” Cultural Representations as well as read France in Indochina Colonial Encounters. Both books gave a good overview of colonial domination in French Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) as a whole, and more specifically how French aesthetics and practices were implanted into the colonies as a form of power. I overall enjoyed France and “Indochina” Cultural Representations, a compilation of essays, and found scholar Penny Edwards’ piece about “Taj Angkor” to relate very muchto what I have already read, especially in Michael Di Giovine’s The Heritage-scape. France in Indochina Colonial Encounters was also a very thorough book about colonial visuality and media, but 1) did not translate French into English (sorry my right brain doesn’t have google translate built in?) and 2) I felt may have over exaggerated or was overly critical, a bit like Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land.

Original cover of Duras' book.

The Seawall, or in French Un barrage contre le Pacifique, is based off of Marguerite Duras’ same-titled novel, one of the first to criticize colonialism in Southeast Asia, and Panh then molded the plot to fit the Cambodian context. Set in 1931, the film begins showing the immense estate belonging to “Madam” and her children, Joseph and Suzanne. Her husband, a civil servant, has either died or disappeared—it is not made clear. We first see madam in the rice fields, realizing that the crops for her and the villagers have been completely ruined because the salt water destroyed them.

Also at the beginning of the film, we find out that Joseph has purchased a horse, and that dies only after one week. Joseph pushes and pushes the horse to work, and finally, it collapses suffocating. According to Nicola Cooper, author of the essay “Disturbing the Colonial Order” in France and “Indochina” Cultural Representations, “the death of the family’s horse symbolizes at once the good intentions and the ideas of the European migrants to Indochina, and their failures.” As Duras’ novel originally states “Il essaya honnêtement de faire le travail qu’on lui demandait et qui était bien au-dessus de ses forces depuis longtemps, puis il creva,” or in English, “He tried honestly to the work that was asked of him and which had been beyond his capacities for a long time. And then he died” (Cooper in Robson & Kim 85, 93).  Madam is like the horse: she tries to “realize a hopeless project” (building a seawall, discussed later), and “succumbs to a seemingly inevitable outcome: madness and death,” just like the horse (Cooper in Robson & Kim 85).

The Seawall.

Madam’s main goal throughout the film is to gain the title to the plot of land she lives on, and to let the villagers use it as well. Part of this includes constructing the Seawall to ensure that the saltwater does not rush in and ruin the harvest in the future. She goes to the villagers and explains this request, and although is at first met with skepticism, the villagers oblige. She is very mutually orientated with the villagers and sees them as “equal” as the time period allows. Madam soon realizes that she was bribed into living on the faulty plot of land that she does, and writes to the French government that she is horrified by this and ashamed to be French—a theme that continues throughout the plot. Duras in her novel as well refers to French colonial corruption often (86). By the end of the film, the Cambodian people build a seawall, watch the rice become “pregnant” (in Balinese language, the term “pregnant” is also used as in both societies, rice has a soul), and in the end watch the seawall collapse.

A pepper plant outside of Kampot, Cambodia
Taken by yours truly in December 2009

The land entitlement certificate disputes get worse throughout the film when Mr. Khing, a Frenchman, tells the villagers around Madame’s bungalow that all of the plots that they have lived and worked on for their whole lives are now owned by and in control of the French government. This is because the Cambodian did not have a title for the land. As the French put it in the film: “Our office has let you farm this land.” The French want the Cambodians to stay on the land, and use demeaning rhetoric to make this look like a favor from the French. Why do the French want the Cambodians to stay? Because pepper plants (what they want to grow) are more valuable than gold, and people need to work on the pepper plantation. As Panh discusses critically in a Cinemonde interview (part of the DVD’s special features), the World Bank still does this today by forcing exports upon countries, such as palm oil, that farmers cannot actually use to feed their families. This makes the land, essentially, not theirs.

A pepper plantation outside of Kampot, Cambodia. Taken
by yours truly in December 2009

As Madam states, “This colony will never experience peace nor rest,” because not only have the French usurped the Cambodian’s livelihoods, but also have taken their dignity. She writes to the French that it is unfair to take the peasants’ land for pepper plants and that the peasants actually “know [their] methods inside and out.” She even writes to the French government to say that she has told the peasants that the government takes advantage of them with the fraudulent land certificates.

Indochina's "Piastres" money.

There are other mini plots throughout the film, for example, Joseph falling in love (lust is actually a better term) with a French girl who he follows to Saigon, and a “Chinaman,” or “Mr. Jo,” who falls in love with Suzanne, only to turnout to be complete scum and on the side of the French taking land. A main string throughout the film is that the family does not have any money, and must rely on selling a diamond ring that Mr. Jo gave Suzanne for money. Nonetheless, this diamond ring has a flaw and it is only by luck that the family can sell it to pay for their debts.

Postcard image circulated during
colonial exhibitions in France of a
"Cambodian Palace Pavillion." 

A French woman in Indochina’s role was to be a “moral tutor” of the “uncivilized” people (Cooper 101). Indeed, various advertisements and pamphlets instructed, “metropolitan French women in Indochina should improve conditions of the colony” (Cooper 102). (Another part was that by having the white men’s wives there, they would not stray with indigenous women and create an “unstable home life” (Cooper 102).) Not all women, however, did this. Madam exemplifies this role as a moral tutor, in a more equal and less “patriarchal feminist” way, because her profession was as a teacher (Cooper 101). Madam genuinely worries about the Cambodian people, and this worry eats at her and in part causes her bad health. We watch madam become disillusioned with the French colonial pursuit and wonder what the French are doing in Cambodia. The “charm and allure” of French Indochina subsided rapidly with “feelings of disappointment, failure, and impotence” (Cooper in Robson & Kim 81). It is also important to note that Indochina was never a settler colony, and that adverts had to convince French people to make the four-week boat journey to go (there was no air service until 1938) (Cooper 118). Very much unlike other French colonies such as Algeria, the French presence in Indochina never surpassed 42,000 (Cooper 118).   

Postcard from France's colonial exposition.

The French attempted to make their being in Cambodia as part of a humanitarian mission to cover up its economic motives (Cooper 33). This was meant to separate France from other European colonial powers that were more explicitly exploitative (Cooper 33). France showed off how much they helped Indochina through exhibits in France: general public works, constructing bridges, building rail / road networks, cultivating land for food, modernizing agriculture, and using raw materials (Cooper 79). This was all spun to be good. In other words: an ethical façade masked colonialism’s exploitive activity in Indochina. These “humanitarian” ideas then lead into what Cooper calls “media colonialism,” in which the main goal is not exploring unknown continents, but rather surveilling the already appropriated (Cooper 68). France, and most of Europe, was then fixed in an “authoritative gaze of dominating power” (Cooper 68).   

Street scene in Kampot, Cambodia. Taken by yours truly in
December 2009

Arc de Triomphe surrounded by fountains
and gardens in Vientiane, Laos. Taken
by yours truly in November 2009 

Cooper describes how colonial urbanism “asserts coercive force” and actually “reinforces cultural and economic superiority over the colonized” (Cooper 49). Urban architecture visually imposes the French’s dominance over Indochina. France used city-planning to reassert its identity and colonial ideal in Indochina (Cooper 49). Architecture was a form of dominance. “The visual impact of the cities…was a codified version of France’s doctrine colonial (Cooper 49). The political motives behind implanting this architectural style into Indochina were to infuse a French identity in the people (Cooper 52). Soon, in the 1930s, Indochina was heavily peppered with French colonial buildings, as well as scattered indigenous villages in the countryside (Cooper 52). These ideas tie into “media colonialism,” and how the architecture might be the visual surveillance giving the French power à la Foucault’s Panopticon (Cooper 68).

French language was not only meant to dominate the people (as the peasants were unable to communicate with the higher-ups, as The Seawall exemplifies), but also in Indochina’s case especially, to homogenize the people from Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese backgrounds into one (Cooper 53). Education in Indochina sought to imbue more French nationalism into the people (Cooper 57). Indeed, the “leçons de morale” were meant to garner loyalty amongst the Indochinese colony and instruct them on what they owed to France (Cooper 57).

Kampot, Cambodia. Taken by
yours truly in December 2009

Angkor Wat poster.

As Rithy Panh explains in the Cinemonde interview, the French saw settling in Indochina as a civilizing mission. Digging underneath this common colonial excuse, Penny Edward’s describes in her essay “Taj Angkor: Enshrining l’Inde in le Cambodge” that although there was the “constant chorus of Cambodia’s need for French protection,” France actually “needed Cambodia to assert its own stakes in the global hegemony of cultural scholarship” (Edwards in Robson & Kim 23). Angkor Wat, for the French, was the “la perle de l'Extreme-Orient” or analogous to India as Britain’s “jewel in the crown.” It represented a great piece of cultural wealth that the French had and was a symbol for their colonial conquest. In fact, Angkor Wat was paraded throughout France in different exhibitions (exhibitions that showed France’s public works, discussed above). Today, Angkor Wat stands as a “locus of nostalgia for the lost empire” (Edwards in Robson & Kim 23). Indeed, Cooper analyzes French tourism trends and sees colonial rhetoric in multiple advertisements for Indochina, while there is a collective colonial amnesia in France about other former colonies, such as Algeria (Cooper 205). The colonial buildings today evoke a sense of “a time lost” for many people, namely French as Cooper argues. What makes Indochina so romantic and exotic? Is it that it was so far? Far enough to forget an exploitative colonial legacy through aesthetically pleasing and picturesque landscape? 

Works Cited:

Cooper, Nicola. “Disturbing the Colonial Order: Dystopia and Disillusionment in Indochina” in Robson, Kathryn and Jennifer Yee, eds. France and Indochina Cultural Representations. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2005. Print.

Cooper, Nicola. France in Indochina Colonial Encounters. New York, New York: Berg Press, 2001. Print.

Edwards, Penny. “Taj Angkor: Enshrining l’Inde in le Cambodge” in Robson, Kathryn and Jennifer Yee, eds. France and Indochina Cultural Representations. New York, New York: Lexington Books, 2005. Print.

The Seawall. Dir. Rithy Panh. Catherine Dussart Productions, 2008. Film. 

Sopheap Pich and Cambodian Contemporary Art

This past weekend I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to visit the Sopheap Pich exhibit there. The exhibit was mostly empty compared to the more popular "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity," which although was excellently well done, deserves the same attention as Pich (I guess that's non-Western art's popularity for you). The exhibit is part of the "Season of Cambodia" exhibit in New York that showcases visual and performing arts from Cambodia in New York City. The  festival is sponsored by Arn Chorn-Pond and his organization Cambodian Living Arts (formerly called The Cambodian Masters Performers Program) as well as New York art institutions in general (for example, the Met and the MoMa). 

What I find most intriguing is that Chorn-Pond is Cambodian but also American, similar with Pich. These artists are Cambodian but have opportunities given to them by being American citizens as well. Being American has provided them, oftentimes, with the financial means to become full-time artists.  Moreover, perhaps maintaing the victimhood of the Khmer Rouge opens up more doors and possibilities for art exhibits. It is in their best interest to maintain victimhood regardless of Chorn-Pond claiming that he wants to make Cambodia not "known for [the] killing fields or political conflicts." Although I do not want to think cynically about Cambodia's amazing and burgeoning contemporary arts scene, I cannot help but wonder about this potential and likely "victimhood" concept.

Born in 1971, Sopheap Pich grew up in Battambang before moving to the United States in 1984 after the Khmer Rouge genocide in 1984. He went to University of Massachusetts Amherst and mostly painted before switching to sculpture in 2004. The vast majority of his sculptures are very large and are made with bamboo and rattan (type of palm) secured with wire. He takes inspiration from "human anatomy and nature,""free circulation," and overall the "shapes in [the] environment."

A slightly illegal picture of "Cycle." All of the photos in
this post are taken by yours truly hiding from the Met guards.

The first piece in room 209 at the Met is called "Cycle," built in 2011, depicting two stomach organs connected together to "invoke bonding or pairing." This sculpture for him invokes the "anonymity of organs, essential to life yet without identity and thus able to assume universality." This conjures up the idea that behind the face, everyone is the same, giving a symbol of anti-racism, anti-hate, etc. As a survivor of genocide, these emotions surely are very apparent in Pich's life and emotions. The abstract stomach shapes for Pich show an "[openness] to possibility."

"Morning Glory"

The next piece was titled "Morning Glory" (2011) and was beautifully spread across the floor of the gallery.  Unlike our morning glory flowers in the United States, Cambodian "morning glories" refer to an edible herb often also called "swamp cabbage." Morning glories, Pich describes in the sculpture's caption, were the second most important source of nourishment after rice during the Khmer Rouge. Pich describes his surprise that they are still popular in Cambodian cuisine as they are the "lowest on the culinary scale" in his mind (that being said, rice was and still is the most important grain in Cambodian society).

"Ratanakiri Valley Drip" (2012) was inspired from his sadness that northern Cambodia is now barren land--stripped of its timber and resources due to greed. When Ratanakiri Province was described to him, he writes in the caption, it was a land of lushness with local villages, but when Pich went to see the region for himself, he found all of this gone from the villagers desperation for financial income. This immediately relates to the (mostly illegal) deforestation still happening in Cambodia presently.  

"Upstream"

His piece "Upstream" (2005) depicted, on a larger and more grand scale, the fish traps that his father made during the Khmer Rouge to catch food (mainly frogs). The nets are supposed to elicit the idea of a border crossing or barrier (a reoccurring theme in the genocide with the Thai border holding refugee camps and the Vietnam border where U.S. soldiers dropped B-52s).

"Junk Nutrients," constructed in 2009, shows an intestine with trash collected from the Beng Kok River outside of his studio close to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city. His intentions were to show pollution, both literally (from the trash) and metaphorically. He describes pollution of the mind through media and body from the numerous chemicals in food--likely hinting to distaste for the Asian Green Revolution. What I found most intriguing was Pich stating that he disliked the "numbing effect of tradition and culture" in the caption. I believe that most likely, Pich wants to break free from the common western attitude that Asian arts should be more "oriental-esque" à la Japanese calligraphy, for example, and not modern sculptures. Indeed, Pich himself is breaking free of the typical Angkor architecture associated with Cambodia. Regardless, Pich should realize (and likely does) that these "traditional" art forms are what Cambodia is still mostly known for and what makes the country internationally renowned and recognized.