Being Khmer
Installation
2009
Being Khmer was inspired by a trip to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Cambodia in July 2009.
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum began as a High School for Children before it became a genocide prison during the reign of Pol Pot during the Khmer Rouge. The classrooms on the ground and the first floors were pierced and divided into individual cells, whereas the ones on the second floor was used for mass detention.
Approximately 17,000 victims (peasants, workers, technicians, engineers, doctors, teachers, students , buddhist monks, ministers, Pol Pot's Cadres, soldiers of all ranks, the Cambodian Diplomatic corps, foreigners, etc,...) were imprisoned and exterminated with their wives and their children.
The Being Khmer installation is about reliving the life of a Cambodian, putting oneself in the shoes of a Cambodian to experience what it is like to be one in the midst of the genocide. The whole idea of the installation was to bring back the experience from the Tuol Sleng genocide prison to Singapore so that its interactive nature will allow the viewer to step in and feel the claustrophobia and fear of the prisoners enclosed in it. This is also a reaction towards an observation that most Singaporeans are living a life far too comfortably, such that many take things around them for granted, and are ignorant to their surroundings.
In the prison cell, the drawings/image transfers of friends and relatives as prisoners were stuck on the wall. Again, closed ones, not any stranger, were used to simulate the experience if something like that would have occured to me, with friends and family exterminated before my eyes.
Being Khmer: Self Portrait as a Tuol Sleng Prisoner
Screen-print on Prepared Wooden Board
2009
Being Khmer: With Death A-watching
Installation with Bricks, Drawings, Photocopy transfer on Prepared Art Card, Graffitti
2009
Being Khmer: Please Be Quiet
Screen-print on Art Card, Installed all over Lasalle Campus
2009
What came across to me as a "Please Do Not Smile" sign installed at various places at the actual site of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, is apparently read as "Please Be Quiet". I found that this sign was unecessary and odd at the same time and decided to alter it so that its original subject, a male, was changed to a self portrait of myself to look similar to the original sign. The sign was then installed at strategic positions alll over the Lasalle campus as an experiment to see how people reacted to it.
To my disappointment, the signs were all removed from their spot a day after installation and have since vanished.
To my disappointment, the signs were all removed from their spot a day after installation and have since vanished.
Being Khmer: A Documentation of Processes
Video Installation, Sketchbook Pages
2009
Being Khmer was showcased in The Longest Distance : The 10th Anniversary of the Winston Oh Travel Award , Praxis & Project Space Galleries, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, 2009
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