「館藏推介」系列邀請特約作者就特定主題精選亞洲藝術文獻庫藏品，並撰寫簡介。以下館藏推介由藝術史學家Pamela N. Corey編撰，主題為柬埔寨現當代藝術的各個面向。

 

以下內容只提供英文版。

 

Introduction

 

In the last two decades a growing body of critical literature on modern and contemporary art in Cambodia has emerged. Documentation of art from the twentieth century is thin, owing in part to the dispersal and destruction of significant archival materials during the turbulent events of the 1970s. The Pol Pot regime (1975–1979) sought to remake Cambodian society into an extremist version of an agrarian communist society; and, as a result, numerous institutions of modern learning were abandoned, vandalised, or repurposed with catastrophic effects. The devastation of this period forced a protracted period of economic and societal rebuilding following the 1979 Vietnamese invasion and decade-long occupation of the country as a Socialist state, during which time propagandistic archival initiatives were undertaken, such as the conversion of the Tuol Sleng detention centre into a museum of genocide. Processes of institutional and infrastructural reconstruction accelerated with the signing of peace agreements in 1991 and the support of UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) from 1992–1993 to establish democratic electoral procedures. NGO and foreign aid workers made up the majority of a burgeoning expatriate population, and the 1990s witnessed Cambodia’s increasing participation in global markets, with investment largely coming from East Asian countries. These developments have contributed to national and international research on Cambodian art and culture, and to institutional projects, many of which were framed by post-Khmer Rouge documentary, memorial, and museological imperatives. Among these, transnational connections often played an important role in attaining major funding and drawing local audiences, as exemplified by the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, co-founded by Ly Daravuth and the late Ingrid Muan.

What these developments have meant for art historical writing on the modern and contemporary, and for the general state of art criticism, are that they has been dominated by the English language, and that much of the research and curatorial writing has until recently been largely concerned with the relationship between art and frameworks of memory and trauma. General art historical research has also primarily been situated in the premodern or the contemporary, with scarce research into modernism in the visual arts. The confluence of these factors is in large part a historical effect, beginning in the early twentieth century. The most established national institution for training in the arts is the Royal University of Fine Arts, initially founded by colonial administrator George Groslier in 1918 as the École des Arts Cambodgiens. The pedagogical mission for the school was to train artisans in the preservation of various artistic and craft practices described in colonial rhetoric as at risk of disappearance, thus resonating with similar discourses on the responsibility of the French to restore the ruins of the Angkorean empire. The focus of teaching was thus to orient students towards particular facets of artistic creation and to locate these practices locally and in the past, thereby marginalising forward- or outward-looking vision and experimentation.

Modern artistic techniques (largely painting scenes, objects, and portraits based on direct observation) were more systematically taught in the early post-Independence period under the guidance of Japanese teacher Suzuki, with the support of Prime Minister Sihanouk, who helmed a modern nation-building project with a particular emphasis on artistic industries. The most celebrated areas of postcolonial artistic innovation lay in music, film, and in particular architecture under the leadership of Vann Molyvann, considered by many to be the architect of Cambodia’s modernity, as exemplified by the New Khmer Architecture movement. Independent studies of Cambodian modern art—if chronologically approximated with mid-twentieth century modernisms elsewhere in the region—have been difficult to accomplish, as modernist styles such as abstraction, surrealism, and cubism aren’t apparent from extant documentation. As demonstrated in the Reyum publication Cultures of Independence, modernity in the visual arts has instead until now been largely apprehended as part of cross-disciplinary developments in art and culture.

Limitations are faced in the present, in terms of the provision of training in the fields of art history, theory, and criticism. RUFA was reopened at the high school level in 1980, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, under the initiative of master silversmith Som Samai; and university-level training was re-established in 1989 with five majors: architecture, plastic arts, archaeology, music, and dance. The history of modern and contemporary art has never been consistently taught as an individual curriculum at the school, although such exposure may have differed for students who received scholarships to study in the Soviet-Eastern bloc in the 1980s. Rather, students have had access to fragments of Euro-American modern art as part of technical studies in plastic training, but modern and contemporary Cambodian examples have been precluded from the main curricula. While aspects of Groslier’s pedagogical model can be traced in the present, with emphases on stylistic reproduction and a lack of critical and theoretical training, larger endemic institutional issues in the realms of public education, governmental support, and allocation of resources should also be considered significant factors undermining progress in arts education, among other sectors.

Ingrid Muan’s 2001 PhD dissertation on art and pedagogy in twentieth-century Cambodia has been an invaluable resource for researchers, as it traced the above-mentioned issues to institutional and artistic formation across education and exhibition-making. As co-founder of the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture (1998–2010), Muan facilitated and witnessed the entrance of Cambodia onto the map of the global art world, facilitated by the growth of regional exhibitions seeking geographical breadth as well as curatorial and scholarly interest in art from post-war societies. The interest in uncharted art worlds for inclusion in the growing biennial circuit coincided with an increase in public discussions about retrieving personal Khmer Rouge period memories as part of a larger reconciliation project, in tandem with the long-planned Khmer Rouge Tribunal, which began proceedings in 2007 after almost fifteen years of fraught negotiations. At the same time, the visual arts became an arena in which artists who had lived through the Khmer Rouge period were largely encouraged to produce work as part of healing. This subject matter began to characterise Cambodian artistic identity through a number of internationally funded projects and exhibitions, such as Legacy of Absence and Art of Survival, and the growing collector base of such artists as Svay Ken, Vann Nath, Sopheap Pich, and Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q. Le. This lent international visibility and legibility to "Cambodian art," following the release of the film The Killing Fields and the controversial 1997 exhibition of Tuol Sleng photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (critiqued in Lindsay French’s essay).

Over the last decade, however, artists in Cambodia have entered expanding routes of global circulation and have benefited from opportunities for international exhibition, exchange, and education. Several artists, such as Sopheap Pich, Leang Seckon, Vandy Rattana, Khvay Samnang, and Anida Yoeu Ali have attained a strong presence internationally for innovative works in sculpture, photography, collage, and performance. Events such as Season of Cambodia, a two month-long series of exhibitions and programs that emphasised the global draw of contemporary art from Cambodia, took place in New York City in 2013. Alongside these developments has been a growing body of research, criticism, and curatorial activity, such as those of artist-led initiatives like Phnom Penh-based Sa Sa Art Projects, whose members have led educational programs targeted at local communities. As a result, new perspectives on the history of modern and contemporary art in, from, and about Cambodia have been steadily gaining ground. Many of these texts are featured throughout the following bibliography.

 

Recommended Readings

 

COLONIAL FORMATION OF THE CAMBODIAN ARTS 

Abbe, Gabrielle, ‘Le Développement des Arts au Cambodge à L’Époque Coloniale: George Groslier et L’École des Arts Cambodgiens (1917–1945)’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 12, 2014, pp. 7–40. [French] CLP.2014

Edwards, Penny, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. [English] REF.EDP2

Herbelin, Caroline, ‘Deux conceptions de l’histoire de l’art en situation coloniale: George Groslier (1887–1945) et Victor Tardieu (1870–1937)’, Siksacakr: The Journal of Cambodia Research, no. 12–13, 2011, pp. 206–218. [French] (not yet available)

Muan, Ingrid, ‘Citing Angkor: the “Cambodian Arts” in the Age of Restoration 1918–2000’, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2001. [English] REF.MUI2 (Closed Stack)

Muan, Ingrid, ‘Haunted Scenes: Painting and History in Phnom Penh’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 6, 2005, pp. 15–37. [English] CLP.2005

Muan, Ingrid, ‘Musings on Museums from Phnom Penh’, in Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, ed. Ivan Karp, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. [English] REF.KAI2

Taylor, Nora A., ‘Cambodia, Axis of the Southeast Asian Universe: Reflections on Art Historiography of the Region’, unpublished conference paper presented at Contemporary Art in Cambodia: A Historical Inquiry, 21 April, 2013, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY. [English] Video in Collection Online

Trois Écoles d’Art de l’Indochine, Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1931. [French] (not yet available)

 

INTERSECTING MODERNITIES 

Corey, Pamela N., ‘Beyond Yet Toward Representation: Diasporic Artists and Craft as Conceptualism in Contemporary Southeast Asia’, Journal of Modern Craft, vol. 9, no. 2, 2016, pp. 161–181. [English] CLP.16.07

Corey, Pamela N., ‘The “First” Cambodian Contemporary Artist’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 12, 2014, pp. 61–94. [English] CLP.2014

Ly, Daravuth, and Ingrid Muan, Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Reyum Publishing, 2001. [Cambodian & English] REF.REI

Muan, Ingrid, ‘Playing with Powers: The Politics of Art in Newly Independent Cambodia’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 6, 2005, pp. 41–56. [English] CLP.2005

Muan, Ingrid, ‘Selling Space: Socialism and Signage in Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge’, In Eye of the Beholder: Reception, Audience, and Practice of Modern Asian Art, eds. J. Clark, M. Peleggi, and T.K. Sabapathy, Sydney: Wild Peony, 2006. [English] REF.CLJ

Nelson, Roger, ‘Pathways in Performance (In and Around Cambodia)?’, Stedelijk Studies, no. 3, December 2015. [English] CLP.2015

Nelson, Roger, ‘”The Work the Nation Depends On”: Nhek Dim, “Cambodian Modern Artist”’, in Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, eds. Sarena Abdullah, Yvonne Low, Phoebe Scott, and Stephen Whiteman, Sydney and Singapore: Power Publications and National Gallery Singapore, 2017, forthcoming. [English] REF.WHS

Grant, Ross H., and Darryl Collins, Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture, 1953–1970, Bangkok: Key Publications, 2006. [English] (not yet available)

Wolfarth, Joanna, ‘Royal Portraiture in the Cambodian Politico-Cultural Complex: Norodom Sihanouk and the Place of Photography’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 12, 2014, pp. 145–167. [English] CLP.2014

 

ART AND TESTIMONY 

Cambodian Artists Speak Out: The Art of Survival, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2008. [English] PER.OPD

Ly, Boreth, ‘Devastated Vision(s): The Khmer Rouge Scopic Regime in Cambodia’, Art Journal, vol. 62, no. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 66–81. [English] PER.ARJ

Ly, Daravuth, and Ingrid Muan, The Legacy of Absence: A Cambodian Story, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Reyum Publishing, 2000. [Cambodian & English] EX.CAM.TLA

Phay-Vakalis, Soko, ed., Cambodia: The Memory Workshop, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Editions Sonleuk Thmey, 2010. [Cambodian, French, & English] REF.PVS

Schlund-Vials, Cathy J., War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. [English] REF.SVC

Svay, Ken, Painted Stories: The Life of a Cambodia Family from 1941 to the Present, Phnom Pen Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Reyum Publishing, 2001. [English] MON.KES2

Svay Ken: Sharing Knowledge, Phnom Penh: Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, 2008. [English] MON.KES2

Y, Chalm, ed., Tribute to Vann Nath, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Bophana Audio Visual Resource Center, 2013. [English] (not yet available)

Thompson, Ashley, and Pamela Corey, ed., ‘Histories and Stories of Phare Ponleu Selpak’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 12, 2014, pp. 171–252. [Cambodian, French, & English] CLP.2014

Vann Nath, A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21, Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus, 1998. [English] MON.NAV

 

ISSUES OF REPRESENTATION 

Corey, Pamela N., ‘Metaphor as Method: Curating Regionalism in Mainland Southeast Asia’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, vol. 13, no. 2, 2014, pp. 72–84. [English] PER.YIS

French, Lindsey, ‘Exhibiting Terror’, in Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights, eds. Mark Bradley and Patrice Petro, pp. 131–155, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002. [English] REF.BRM2

Gleeson, Erin, ‘Mutualism for the Future’, in Who Cares: 16 Essays on Curating in Asia, eds. Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya and Michael Lee, pp. 58–72, Hong Kong: Para/Site Art Space, Singapore: Studio Bibliotheque and seed | projects, 2010. [English] REF.FOA2

Nelson, Roger, ‘“Performance is Contemporary”: Performance and its Documentation in Visual Art in Cambodia’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 12, 2014, pp. 95–144. [English] CLP.2014

Thompson, Ashley, ‘Emergenc(i)es: the Auto-ethnographic Impulse in Contemporary Cambodian Art’, in Essays on Art in Southeast Asia: Charting Thoughts, eds. Low Sze Wee and Patrick Flores, Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017, forthcoming. [English] REF.LSW3

Thompson, Ashley, ‘Forgetting to Remember, Again: On Curatorial Practice and “Cambodian Art” in the wake of genocide’, Diacritics, vol. 41, no. 2, 2013, pp. 82–109. [English] CLP.2013

Vuth, Lyno, ‘Cambodian Photographers Document War and Violence: Vandy Rattana, Khvay Samnang, and Sovan Philong’, Trans Asia Photography Review, vol. 3, no. 1, Fall 2012. [English] PER.TAP

Vuth, Lyno, ‘Knowledge Sharing and Learning Together: Alternative Art Engagement from Stiev Selapak and Sa Sa Art Projects’, Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies, no. 12, 2014, pp. 253–302. [Cambodian, French, & English] CLP.2014

Zhuang, Wubin, ‘Mekong Spring: Cambodian Photography in the Last Decade’, Asia Art Archive Perspectives, March 2012. [English] IDEAS

 

CURATORIAL ENTRY POINTS (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) 

Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries: Unity in Diversity in International Art: Post-Event Catalogue. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1997. [English] EXL.INO.CAN

The 1st Asian Art Triennale 1999 [the 5th Asian Art Show], Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1999. [Japanese & English] EX.JAP.FUT.1999

Ly, Daravuth, and Ingrid Muan, ed., Visions of the Future: An Exhibition of Contemporary Cambodian Art, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Reyum Publishing, 2002. [Cambodian & English] EX.CAM.VFE

Visual Arts Open: Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh, New Art Gallery Phnom Penh, 2005. [Cambodian, French, & English] EXS.CAM.VAO

Ly, Daravuth, In Transition: Contemporary Cambodian Artists, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Reyum Institute, 2006. [Cambodian & English] EX.CAM.TIC

Underlying: Contemporary Art Exhibition from the Mekong Sub-Region, Bangkok, Thailand: The Mekong Art and Culture Project, 2008. [English] EX.THA.UCA

Ciric, Biljana, et al., Strategies from Within: An Exhibition of Vietnamese and Cambodian Contemporary Art Practices, Shanghai: Ke Center for Contemporary Arts, 2008. [Simplified Chinese & English] EX.CHN.SEV

The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, 2009. [English] EX.AUS.APT.2009

Sauerlander, Katrin, ed., dOCUMENTA (13) Catalog 2/3: The Logbook, Ostfilderm: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012. [German & English] EX.GER.DOC.2012

Gleeson, Erin, et al., connect: Phnom Penh: Rescue Archaeology: Contemporary Art and Urban Change in Cambodia, Berlin: Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, 2013. [German & English] EX.GER.CPP

The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, 2015. [English] EX.AUS.APT.2015

Huddleston, Charlotte, and Roger Nelson, eds., FIELDS: An Itinerant Inquiry Across the Kingdom of Cambodia, Auckland, NZ: ST PAUL St Gallery, AUT University; Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Sa Sa Bassac, 2015. [English] REF.HUC

 

Pamela N. Corey, Lecturer in Southeast Asian Art, SOAS, University of London