The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 152 I, Svay Sreth, eat rubber sandals (still) 2015 Single-channel video: 16:9, colour, sound, 9:46 minutes Mon Boulet (still) 2011 Single-channel video: 16:9, colour, sound, 19:25 minutes (opposite) Beyond Sunflower (still) 2018 Single-channel video: colour, sound, 16:9, 2:55 minutes Courtesy: The artist Svay Sareth’s practice has been shaped by his unique upbringing and entry into art production, through which he has become dedicated to maintaining Cambodia’s cultural heritage while confronting contemporary social concerns. Born in the years leading up to the devastating Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79), Svay spent the majority of his childhood living in the Site II Refugee Camp on the Thai–Cambodia border — once the largest refugee camp in South-East Asia. He took drawing classes along with a small group of children and, after the camp closed in 1993, the group founded the influential Phare Ponleu Selpak art school in Battambang, which continues to thrive today. 1 Alongside his own art practice, Svay has continued to be a prominent educator and organiser for Cambodian arts and crafts as the Artistic Director of Artisans D’Angkor, and established the Blue Art Centre School in Siem Reap in 2020. Svay has created sculptural works that combine aspects of Cambodia’s renowned Buddhist relics and narratives with commentary on its history of war and political instability. He also remains one of Cambodia’s most prolific performance artists, producing a unique body of work over almost two decades. This body of work began spontaneously after he fell ill while struggling to develop a painting practice at art school in France. Inspired by a healing ritual, he attached a shaped metal shield to his bicycle, which he then dragged along the ground from Normandy to Paris: I saw that what happened to the metal shield was very violent. It related to my own story when I was living in the camp, and also the story of civil war in Cambodia. 2 After the journey, he burned his paintings and carried the ashes around with him, shifting his practice in new directions. 3 One of Svay’s most important performances followed a similar concept on his return to Cambodia. For a staggering durational project entitled Mon Boulet 2011, he carried an enormous 80-kilogram metal sphere for approximately 250 kilometres — from the ancient capital near Siem Reap to the centre of Cambodia’s contemporary economy in Phnom Penh. Like a ‘ball and chain’, the sphere acted as a metaphor for the weight of a traumatic history carried by so many Cambodians. Over the course of his long journey, Svay had no provisions or places to sleep, meaning his performance stimulated conversations and interactions with many people. While the artist has staged performative works around the world, those made in Cambodia remain poignant reflections and reveal the artist’s freedom to negotiate his feelings and anxieties about local culture and explore the nature of collective memory. The 2015 video performance, I, Svay Sareth, eat rubber sandals , shows Svay chewing on the rudimentary sandals commonly worn by both the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Viet Cong in Vietnam — his torturous attempt symbolising atrocities that have occurred in South- East Asia. In Prendre les Mesures 2015, Svay uses a large needle commonly used for mending overworn rice sacks to measure — one needle-length at a time — the site of Angkor Wat over the course of eight hours. The mending ritual draws attention to the exploitation of the monument through history, from the colonial era to the more recent privatisation of ticket sales and effects of mass tourism. Also staged in temple-ruin complexes, in the 2018 video Beyond Sunflower the artist dons a sunflower mask and plays a series of non-melodic screeching sounds on a Tro, a traditional Khmer string instrument, which pierces through the ruin’s surroundings. This work similarly focused Svay’s concern for foreign interests in Cambodia: the sunflower deployed to symbolise reliance on external forces (such as sun and rain to grow); and the vulnerability of Cambodian culture signalled by the violent, non-melodic sounds erupting from the misused traditional instrument. These works critically engage with the fragility of historical sites and draw reactions from a contemporary public in order to weave together the weight of history with the complexity of the present. Tarun Nagesh Endnotes 1 Phare Ponleu Selpak, meaning ‘The Brightness of the Arts’ in Khmer language, was founded in 1994 by French humanitarian Véronique Decrop along with nine students she had taught in the Site II Refugee Camp. 2 Svay Sareth in Annie Jael Kwan, ‘Conditions for performance in Cambodia: Interview with Svay Sareth’, Annie Jael Kwan , 4 June 2019, <https://anniejaelkwan.com/2019/06/04/conditions-for-performance- in-cambodia-interview-with-svay-sareth/>, viewed June 2021. 3 Naima Morelli, ‘Svay Sareth: Creating experience by making things’, CoBo Social , 29 August 2019, <https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/ svay-sareth-making-things/>, viewed June 2021. Svay Sareth Born 1972, Battambang, Cambodia Lives and works in Siem Reap, Cambodia