Leang Seckon (Cambodian, b.1974)

Covering Skirt (Somphut Butbahng)

Footnotes

Exhibited:
Heavy Skirt: Leang Seckon, Rossi & Rossi, London, 31 March to 29 April 2010

Published:
Heavy Skirt: Leang Seckon, Rossi & Rossi, London, 2010, unpaginated

黎西貢　覆蓋裙子　混合媒材畫布　木框　二〇〇九年作

簽名：Seckon, 09

展覽：
「沈重裙子──Leang Seckon」，Rossi & Rossi，倫敦，2010年3月31至4月29日

出版：
《沈重裙子──Leang Seckon》，Rossi & Rossi，倫敦，2010年，無頁碼

Leang Seckon was born into the deep poverty of the Prey Veng province, Cambodia, and directly experienced the brutality of the Khmer Rouge era. Almost a generation of artists was wiped out during the genocidal years, leaving an undeniable gap and a palpable legacy in Cambodian art, upon which Leang reflects in his creative practice.

Intensely autobiographical, this lot draws poignant references to the heaviness of history and his family circumstances. The somphut or skirt that his mother wore whilst she was pregnant with him during the civil war of the early 1970s was old and quilted with patches. His family's subsistence-level earnings from the rice farm did not generate enough money for new clothing. The thick fabric suggests the burden of survival in the face of relentless hunger from the start of the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1965 until the Vietnamese army overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.

Images such as the mythical serpent, old age and suffering are presented in rows of circular motifs like falling bombs. In the process of catharsis, however, flowers and Buddhist iconography emerge, transforming scarred memories into a garden of new life, seemingly to convey that the tumultuous history of modern Cambodia also breed creativity and hope.