Christine Chaumeau

Young Cambodian artists confront painful KhmerRouge pastLille exhibition showcases how a generation born after Pol Pot’s murderous regime are reacting to history

Friday 9 October 2015 17.00 BST

F orty years after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, ruling from 1975 to 1979, thecountry is still recovering from the genocide they perpetrated and the decades of conflict thatfollowed. In recent years it has enjoyed fast but uneven development, powered by a youthful

population, half of which is under 25.

New buildings climb ever higher into the sky, fortunes are being made and Cambodia has begun toexplore its recent past through contemporary art. Galleries have opened in the big cities – PhnomPenh, Siem Reap and Battambang – but emerging artists have also had shows in New York, Brisbaneand Paris. Some are showing their work as part of the Renaissance Lille 3000 festival.

Kim Hak, for example, was born in 1981, so almost all he knows about the Khmer Rouge he heardfrom his parents. At the age of 27, fascinated by snapshots of pre-war Cambodia, he gave up his jobin the travel trade and become a full-time photographer. His Alive series, which is showing at Lille,features about 40 objects set against a black background. One picture shows a notebook, its edgesnibbled away, probably by insects, moisture and time. The text on the yellowed, lined pages isnevertheless still legible.

The idea for this project came when his family moved house and he stumbled on a set of pre-1975photographs. “I wondered how my parents had managed to keep them. It was dangerous to be

caught with this sort of evidence of a ‘bourgeois’ lifestyle,” he says. He found out the pictures hadbeen buried, which made him understand that hanging on to objects allowed people to retain asense of dignity under the Pol Pot regime. It expressed their refusal to comply with thecommunists’ efforts to create a “new” society. Drawing on familiar objects, Hak has producedindirect portraits of his relatives. “There’s a story attached to each object,” he explains. A batteredpot, with chicken claws poking out from under the lid, is a tribute to his mother, who used the potto cook the rare scraps of meat they managed to sneak past Khmer Rouge guards. It still has prideof place in her kitchen.

Work by painter Chov Theanly is also on show at Lille. He prefers the peace and quiet of his homein Battambang, northern Cambodia, to the bustle of Phnom Penh. His Surviving series has a lonefigure in the centre of each canvas.

Although the first impression is one of clarity and beauty, something is awry. Perhaps it’s thesubject’s pose, each figure standings on tiptoes, about to lose their balance. A line runs across eachpicture, so that every figure looks like they are trying to keep their heads above water. “It’s a signthat we’re all under pressure, on the verge of drowning,” Theanly says. He spends his nightsbrowsing the net, keen to learn more about art history and master the techniques and subtleties ofworking in oil. “I don’t want people to like [my work] because I’m from Cambodia and my countrywas at war,” he explains.

“The older generation struggled simply to survive, whereas this generation of artists feel freer,more daring,” says Dana Langlois, head of JavaArts, the Phnom Penh gallery she set up in 2000. Butreflecting on the past means confronting difficulty subjects.

“Portraits are still a very difficult exercise,” says Christian Caujolle, who launched the Phnom PenhPhoto festival and curated the Lille exhibition. Even now photographers find it hard to forget thefaces of inmates of security prison S21 in the capital, where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killedmore than 12,000 people. The prison staff photographed every prisoner; each was labelled anenemy of the regime and sent for “destruction”. These pictures have since been used in evidencein trials.

Leang Seckon, who has shown regularly in London and Singapore, takes a different approach toHak’s sparseness. He was only two when the Khmer Rouge took over. His works are alive withcolour and allegory, for him “beauty [is] much needed after destruction”.

Using glue and thread, Seckon collates images from newspapers and playing cards picked up in thestreet. He combines this with kbach designs, decorative elements often found in Cambodianarchitecture. His collages can be seen as a chronicle of recent history, past injuries, the importanceof royalty, or indeed excess and inequality.

“These artists are brave enough to face up to the country’s problems. Their work connects past andpresent, giving a sensory dimension to history,” says Soko Phay, a lecturer at Paris-8 University.

This generation draws its inspiration and vitality from the late-1990s. The peace treaty was signedin Paris in October 1991, it was not until 1998 that the last Khmer Rouge surrendered. That waswhen hope was really rekindled in Cambodia. The current explosion of ideas and art forms is thefruit of seeds sown by film director Rithy Panh’s painstaking labour of memory, by the paintings byVann Nath and the publications of the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh, headedby Ly Daravuth, a Franco-Cambodian artist, and Ingrid Muan, an American scholar.

Haunted by an urgent need to convey a message, the works often resonate with one another.

Monologue, an installation by Vandy Rattana that featured at the Jeu de Paume in Paris earlier thisyear, is reminiscent of Hak’s Alive project. Both lost an elder sister during the dictatorship. Rattanafilms a group of mango trees, their leaves glittering in the bright light, set in tranquil Cambodian

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countryside where farmers graze oxen. But when we hear the artist reading a letter to his vanished

sister, we realise that the shade of the trees conceals a mass grave where his sister lies. To find the

place Rattana asked his father.

“At home, everything is covered up,” he says. “I had to go abroad to learn about my country’s

history. It’s not so much the picture that matters, it’s the idea behind it.”

Even the most harmless landscape bears the scars of the past. But this legacy can be sublimated as

in Mon Boulet (my ball and chain), a performance by Svay Sareth. In 2011 the artist dragged a two-

metre round metal ball some 250km from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. It took five days. His symbol

of overwhelming collective memories glittered in the sunlight. Tour Cambodia and you may find

works of art like gold nuggets in the mud, items like the objects that survivors dug up after the fall

of the regime and Hak photographed. Still lives full of vitality that he hopes to pass on to the next

generation.

Phnom Penh – Renaissance Lille 3000 is at the Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse, Lille, until 17 January

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde

This article was amended on 3 November 2015 to remove an image of the artwork The Elephant

and the Pool of Blood, by Leang Seckon. This piece is not included in the Renaissance Lille 3000

festival, although other artworks by Leang Seckon are.