SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Given the recent attention to Cambodian contemporary art as one of the latest phenomena to expand the perimeters of the global art world, this essay considers the historicization of “the first Cambodian contemporary artist.” By analyzing the artworks produced by and the discourses surrounding Leang Seckon (b. 1974), Pich Sopheap (b. 1971), Svay Ken (1933-2008), and Vann Nath (1946-2011), this article suggests that these four particular artists were integral to a shift in the critical regime of representation of “Cambodian contemporary art” from roughly 2003 to 2010. I focus on this group as representative of a certain moment of transition, when these artists gained a level of international exposure through various platforms of reception, including art exhibitions, film, art writing, autobiographical publication, and scholarly work. Tracing the diverse criteria through which each of them came to represent “the first Cambodian contemporary artist” reveals the extent to which these artists were at the core of expanding discourses on aesthetics, biography, community, history, and oscillating attributions of being modern/contemporary.