PERMANENT EXHIBITION

Seasonal Theme
2025-2026

Journey & Passion

The Tale of Svay Sareth and Yim Maline

English Audio

In the terrain of Journey and Passion, the traces, remnants, and residue of the past and the memory are rearranged and recuperated, engendering new (understanding of) histories and hybrid histories and making room for previously absent and repressed voices to be heard or resurfaced, in particular, individual and indigenous ones. Recounting Cambodia’s modern history since the genocidal period (ramifications of the Second Indochina War) up until the present day through personal recollections, stories, observations, and visions, Svay Sareth and Yim Maline’s creative works, materialized and erected in this space, become a privileged vehicle for the interrogation of history.Their art is not just a scientific method of unearthing truths but a unique claim to the immediacy of past events. As the viewer will see, art is a witness to, and an artifact of, the past that existed in the present.

In addition, Journey and Passion is a story of triumph over illusion, difficulty, and life itself, and how (contemporary) art is a way for post-conflict reconstruction societies such as Cambodia to move forward.

Structurally, the story of Journey and Passion unfolds across three floors. The first half of the story, located on the first floor, features works by Svay Sareth. Here, themes such as identity, memory, and the sociocultural history of Cambodia, particularly in the aftermath of the Second Indochina War that led to genocide and prolonged civil war in the country, are explored through multidisciplinary practices, spanning performance, video, sculpture, and installation. Most of Svay’s creative works are marked by a unique blend of whimsical humor and somber reflections on trauma, history, and identity.

Svay’s art often incorporates personal stories (a survivor and a witness of genocide and civil war) that speak of individual and collective history, by extension, creating a dialogue between Cambodia’s past, present, and future and the larger historical narrative, what operates visually to exemplify the small-that-is-large. Works such as Bouclier (2008), Warning House (ongoing project), and Mon Boulet (2011), also featured in this show, are powerful examples of how art can function as a form of catharsis, helping individuals and communities overcome trauma, develop resilience, celebrate their identity, and honor their cultural heritage. Svay’s resilience in the face of such trauma is truly inspiring.The second half of Journey and Passion, located on the upper floors, is dedicated to the works of Yim Maline, who, in return, uses art to commemorate nature and Mother Earth, of which the artist has established an intimate relationship. Growing up in extreme poverty, plants and trees became the only available materials for the young Yim to play, formulate her expression, and reconstruct her imaginary world. Thus, the featured works in this exhibition serve as a site for exploring the artist’s childhood memories in a war-torn country, where artmaking becomes a means to reflect on the complex impacts of war, trauma, and human-made violence on both the natural environment and living individual and societal structures of today.

Often involved with minute details and assiduousness, Yim’s work is also informed by her commitment to climate justice and the critique of ecological displacement and destruction. Yim sensitively probes this tension in her work.

This can be seen in the soft-sculpture installation using found fabrics to form exaggerated raindrops entitled Back to Us and in Artificial Aesthetics, an installation formulated using found fabric to imitate landscape, waterfall, flora and fauna, and microorganisms.Yim’s works urge the viewers to see how urgent the issue of human activities affecting the environment is, our notions of home, and whether or not artificial intervention and creation could replace the beautification of our natural world. While navigating through the terrain of Journey and Passion, viewers may find themselves drawn to certain artworks and their shapes, colors, and textures, or specific stories. This also allows viewers to see how art places the past within history, that is, within a temporal configuration that links it to the present.

In Svay Sareth’s and Yim Maline’s world, like a historiography, works of art can enlighten us about the past, tell the unrecognized truth of their moment, and point ahead to the future. They can make us aware of our own present and our connection with the past, trace the contours of those memories or phantom limbs that we no longer have but whose presence we still feel. This does not so much make us “whole” in an individual sense as establish a link between ourselves and those who have gone before, a reciprocal relation in which the past speaks and we give it a voice. It enlightens us, and we carry that message to the future, thereby emphasizing our responsibility in preserving and passing on the lessons of history.

By Reaksmey Yean

SVAY SARETH

Cambodian 1972

English Audio

Svay Sareth (born in 1972, Battambang, Cambodia / lives and works Siem Reap) holds a Diplôme National Supérieur d’Études des Arts Plastiques, University of Caen, Normandy (2009). Notable group exhibitions include 10th Asia Pacific Triennial, Biennale of Sydney, Gwangju Biennale, and Singapore Biennale. He won the Prudential Eye Award’s Best Emerging Artist Award in 2016. As a co-founder of Phare Ponleu Selepak (1994) and co-founded with Yim Maline of Blue Art Center (2018). Svay Sareth’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in an autobiography of resistance. As a child survivor of genocide in Cambodia and former refugee on the Thai-Cambodian border until young adulthood, Sareth believes personal and collective memory and its formation as official history require constant confrontation in the ongoing present. Tempering strength with futility and survival with adventure, Sareth’s work is layered and complex with desires for freedom and catharsis. Using his body as a medium to question order and authority, Sareth’s durational performance practice is public and interventional by nature, requiringhigh levels of physical and mental endurance.

For Mon Boulet (2011), meaning “my burden”, Sareth journeyed six days, pulling a cumbersome, two-meter-wide, 80-kilogram reflective metal sphere 300 kilometers from the ancient to present-day capital of Cambodia, carrying with him a few basic amenities associated with refugee migrations worldwide. In his highly-crafted, ongoing soft-sculpture series, Ruins, camouflaged and cartoonish figures are carefully sewn into different roles. While some are monumental in scale and challenge Buddhist moral teaching, others pile on the floor referencing looted Khmer stone statuary, and others, like the installation Yell and Silent (2018), are autobiographical. The readymade is also a significant part of Sareth’spractice. Stake or Skewer combines seventeen black rubber sandals on a bamboo carrying pole, symbolic of the number of years he spent in labor and refugee camps. For a corresponding work, Eat (both 2015), the artist programmed a scrolling LED sign in red font the seventeen words for “eat” in Khmer language based on historical and hierarchical connections between class, education, and rights of speech.

Embodiment of Mental Healing

English Audio

Svay Sareth is celebrated for his profound exploration of themes such as identity, memory, and the sociocultural history of Cambodia, particularly in the aftermath of the Second Indochina War that led to genocide and prolonged civil war. His artistic practice is multidisciplinary, spanning performance, video, sculpture, and installation, is marked by a unique blend of whimsical humor and somber reflections on trauma, history, and identity. Sareth’s art often incorporates personal (histories to speak about individual and collective histories, by extension, creating a dialogue between Cambodia’s past, present, and future and the larger historical narrative what operates visually to exemplify the small-that-is-large. Sareth’s Asura Sunflower, an ongoing soft-sculpture series that incorporates camouflage-print cotton, kapok, and playful ornamental stitching, exemplifies these themes. His earlier soft-sculpture series includes works like Toy (Churning of the Sea of Milk) (2013) and Ruins (2014). Drawing inspiration from the ruined Hindu-Buddhist mythological figures of the Asuras that adorn the gateways of Angkor Thom, this bodiless Asura Sunflower, in the Buddhist worldview, embodies the “three unwholesome roots” moha (delusion), lobha (greed or sensual attachment), and dosa (aversion) which lead to suffering and destruction. As such, the work serves as a stark reminder of the destructive consequences of these forces: they may also account for the ongoing global conflicts that continue to shape our world today.

On a more personal level, Asura Sunflower reflects Svay’s own experience as a witness and survivor of the Cambodian genocide and civil war the pain inflicted on his body and the body of his motherland by the manufactured catastrophes, like the stitches adorned the sculpture’s camouflaged skin to represent traces or scars. By blending traditional Cambodian art forms with contemporary methods, the piece speaks to the resilience of the Cambodian people who, despite enduring the horrors of war and genocide, have managed to suppress their anger and hatred in order to forgive and rebuild their nation like the Angkor that persisted through time and turmoil. This theme of resilience is further underscored by the work’s reference to the repatriation of looted and decapitated cultural artifacts to Cambodia from around the world. This act symbolizes the restoration and renewal of a nation’s cultural identity and soul, like the glittering gold that punctuated the Asura Sunflower, making the piece more noticeable and powerful. The gold adornments on the sculpture evoke a sense of renewal, suggesting that the old can be made new and relevant again, much like the Cambodian people themselves have done in their recovery from past trauma. In this way, Asura Sunflower speaks to the Cambodian people’s personal and collective struggles and is a powerful example of how art can function as a form of catharsis helping individuals and communities overcome trauma, celebrate their identity, and honor their cultural heritage. Through his innovative use of materials and themes, Sareth’s work highlights the possibility of healing and transformation for individuals and nations.

YIM MALINE

Cambodian 1982

English Audio

Born in Battambang in 1982, Maline is an alumna of Phare Ponleu Selpak art school (1995-2003) and holds a BFA in Fine Art from the École Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Caen la Mer, France (2010). Her solo exhibitions include “Having a Hole or empty space inside” at SA SA BASSAC (2015) and “Silk Threads” at Insider Gallery, Inter Continental Hotel, Phnom Penh (2012).

Yim Maline is a Cambodian artist whose dynamic practice encompasses meticulous graphite drawings and impactful sculptures. Her conceptual foundations stem from a profound engagement with the memories of her childhood during the post-genocide Cambodian civil war. This personal history serves as a catalyst to explore the enduring and complex repercussions of this period on the natural environment, individual lives, and societal structures. Maline’s ambitious and skillful manipulation of materials provokes critical reflection, while an underlying sense of tension and uncertainty chall enges conventional perspectives.

She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including “Futurographies: Cambodia – USA – Paris” and “And that which was always known” at Yavuz Gallery, Singapore (2015). Maline has also undertaken residencies in Japan (2017), Jose Arts Lab, Johannesburg, South Africa (2016), Vermont Studio Center, VT, USA (2015), and Bose Pacia Transparent Studio, NYC (2013) as part of Season of Cambodia’s IN RESIDENCE program.