Svay
Ken was born in Takeo Province in 1933. He came to Phnom Penh in the
1950s and worked as a waiter and handyman at the Hotel le Royal for
more than thirty years. Svay Ken began to make paintings of everyday
Cambodian life during the last years that he was working at the Hotel
when he was about sixty years old. After his wife, Tith Yun, died
in February 2000, Svay Ken sat down and wrote what he called “the
story of her life”. The book tells the story of Tith Yun and
Svay Ken, following the events and adventures of their family as they
live through the tumultuous last sixty years of Cambodia’s history.
At the invitation of Reyum, Svay Ken began to paint pictures to go
along with his written text. This exhibition and its accompanying
book are the culmination of our project together. The wall labels
next to the paintings briefly note events which are fully described
in the text of the book.
In Cambodia, relationships to the past - particularly the recent past
- are uneasy, and both personal and collective histories too often
remain silent. We chose to present these paintings and their story
to the public in the hope that Svay Ken’s effort will spur others
to remember and record events which might seem banal and decidedly
un-grand, but which however make up a history of everyday life and
experience. The form in which Svay Ken presents his history speaks
to this language of the ordinary. His paintings are not considered
“art” by the many who judge his work using common values
of what is considered “beautiful”, “educated”,
or “finished” in contemporary Cambodia. Still these paintings
as a whole present a vivid account of a life lived and in their very
proliferation, insist that we take them into account. In a similar
way, many of the scenes which they depict are neither pretty nor decorative
and thus these pictures function in a different register than the
vast majority of paintings in Cambodia today. Despite their difference,
we hope that these paintings find a place and a meaning in Cambodian
society just as we think that their means of depiction should be recognized
and embraced as one of many forms of possible expression.
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