The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

135 Svay Ken Painting from life Svay Ken’s powerfully honest and vivid observations of daily life forged a new path for Cambodian contemporary art, in which self-expression and personal history merge with the Khmer artisan tradition of the cheang salapak gor , or worker–artist. 1 His subjects include still lifes, portraits, moral allegories and everyday scenes, often drawn from memory and photographs. During his 15-year painting career, Svay was internationally renowned as one of the few Cambodian artists to have openly depicted life under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79); in 2000–01, he painted a significant 128-canvas cycle tracing his wife’s life, from birth to her death from cancer — in the process encompassing 60 years of modern Cambodian history. Before his own death in 2008, Svay completed a final series of paintings entitled ‘Sharing knowledge’, a selection of which is featured in APT6. Svay Ken was born in 1933 into a family of farmers and temple painters in the southern province of Takeo. He was sent to a monastery as a youth, where he studied Buddhist scriptures and philosophy, as well as the Khmer alphabet. As a young man he moved to Phnom Penh, and worked as a porter at the prestigious Hotel Le Royal until he and his family were forced out of the city in 1975, under Pol Pot’s Mao- influenced regime, to work as rural labourers. The family survived but were separated, and did not reunite until four years later, following the Khmer Rouge’s defeat by the Vietnamese army, when Svay returned to Phnom Penh and resumed work at the hotel, remaining there until his retirement in 1993. To continue supporting his family, Svay Ken began painting shortly before his retirement, at first selling works to hotel guests. Although self-taught, he quickly gained local attention, and his first exhibition was held at the New Art Gallery in Phnom Penh in 1994. He subsequently began showing regularly in Cambodia and internationally, and became a role model for younger artists. With the destruction of much Khmer culture during the Pol Pot era, the visual arts in Cambodia was, and still is, largely comprised of slick landscapes and traditional imagery produced for the tourist market. Svay Ken’s paintings differ markedly, using raw, direct brushwork and an intuitive palette to depict quotidian experience, even under harsh circumstances. His Khmer Rouge period paintings, for example, include scenes of violence and warfare, but also of people cooking, eating and working. These recollections are unique and significant; as so much individual and collective memory was lost, the era remains largely unrepresented, particularly from a local perspective. Svay once stated: I don’t want people to forget how life was. I make my paintings so that future generations can ponder the question: ‘How was life then and how is life now?’ 2 The ‘Sharing knowledge’ series was also conceived as a message for the future. It illustrates Buddhist religious and moral statements, offering guidance to the young for living a good and honest life. The works reflect Svay’s early temple education and lifelong ethos, and indicate his concern with the decline of morals and tradition in contemporary Cambodian society. They warn against greed, selfishness, and the neglect of parents and those in need, as well as affirming the importance of respecting elders. As the artist has said: I didn’t choose to share many lessons on prosperity. I want the young people to know more the causes of self-ruin. Sometimes one’s nature is good, but one commits sins absentmindedly. 3 Svay Ken’s selected statements are painted in a flat, structured format evoking traditional temple murals. The elaborate Khmer script forms a distinctive and central feature of each work, and the images are comprised of group portraits and tableaux. Set against monochromatic backgrounds of dark greens and blacks — and, in one startling work, sickly yellow — the paintings communicate the artist’s moral advice directly and assertively. While located in time-honoured religious teachings, they are also grounded in contemporary life; a recurrent theme is the growth of a wealthy urban middle class in Phnom Penh, who often come from farming families and increasingly leave their poorer rural relatives behind. As with all of Svay’s paintings, the apparent simplicity and immediacy of the ‘Sharing knowledge’ series is underpinned by keen observation, a deep understanding of the function of painting in Cambodian society, and a belief in the role of the artist as witness and storyteller. Russell Storer Endnotes 1 Erin Gleeson, ‘Where I work: Svay Ken’, Art Asia Pacific , no.59, July–August 2008, p.172. 2 Svay Ken, quoted in Erin Gleeson, ‘Svay Ken: Home and country’, Art Asia Pacific , no.46, fall 2005, p.61. 3 Svay Ken, ‘Artist’s statement’, in Svay Ken: Sharing Knowledge [exhibition catalogue], Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre, Phnom Penh, 2008, p.7.