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ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTIONS > Visual > Southeast
Asian
Linda Saphan | I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
in 1975. Fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime, my family
took residence in Canada. I went on to graduate
from the University of Paris X in 2007 with a PhD in Social Anthropology
and a bachelor's of Arts in Khmer Studies.
I became an artist when I did
my PhD field research in Cambodia. I was very much inspired by
the culture and urban texture of Phnom Penh. The possibilities
offered by the country gave me the courage to fully express myself
as an artist.
My art work presents myself
as an artist who is not distanced from contemporary society. I
am very much at home in my own time and comfortable with the many
lifestyles and resulting imaginations that exist. My work expresses
an awareness of participating in a new, developing, and active
world full of possibilities, as well as of contradictions and
paradoxes. The issues raised by my art works depict the variety
of today's culture and its fascinating, rich and complex appearance,
which is both global and particularly local, endlessly repetitive
and endlessly differentiated. While visual aspects are the dominant
dimension of this world, they are nevertheless inseparably connected
to other fields. This is reflected not only in the multitude of
sources I take my inspiration from (personal snapshot, old photography
from family albums, sign panels' images etc.) but perhaps no less
in the fact that I am myself dealing with other media (drawing,
installations, sculpture and photography). In such a world, painting
can be only one of several possible and equally interesting creative
mediums.
My commitment to the art community
The commitment of my art work is more than a personal identity
research, the impact upon the art students and professional artists
and among the Cambodian Diasporas overseas is essential in their
own reflection of identity. The "khmerness" issues from
the Khmer Rouges lead to genocides. Under the years of pro-communism
government afterward, censorship was at it fullest. Now a day,
Cambodian people in the country self censor themselves either
out of fear of the future or out of habit of silencing their opinions.
To me, it is more than promoting a Cambodian art scene and empowering
a culture, it is about free expression wherever you are.
My purpose from the very beginning was to create a binding relationship
between artists of different dimensions, connecting them to exhibiting
spaces and vice versa, and to show the public the most creative
minds working in the visual arts nowadays in Cambodia.
For me, Cambodian art should be considered as contemporary art
and not simply as a nationalistic endeavour or as representing
ideas of exoticism. Through my website and future curatorial efforts,
I seek to exhibit the most prominent Cambodian artists in the
country and outside. I also hope to create a sense of art community
amongst the visual artists.
The Incognito series
The Incognito series presents
Cambodian women under an attractive, rich and complex aspect -
at the same time global and particularly local. The Khmer society
is traditionally constraining, with a constant control of the
young people. When they move around town or elsewhere, one pays
attention to one's clothing to avoid getting tanned - Asian society
praises a clear complexion. All the protective clothing creates
unrecognizable individuals. This anonymity gives a feeling of
freedom in the city, contrary to that of Muslim countries where
women are masked by tradition. Incognito depicts the Asian woman
differently than an exotic and submitted object.
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