Svay Sareth is one of Cambodian leading artists, who began making art as a teenager while living in a refugee camp. His works in sculpture, installation and durational performance are made using materials and processes intentionally associated with war – metals, uniforms, camouflage and actions requiring great endurance.
Background
Svay Sareth was born in 1972 in Battambang, Cambodia during a period of political turmoil and violence that would last until he was 18 years old. Svay began making art as a young teenager in the Site 2 refugee camp, near the Thai-Cambodian border.
Education
After studying art at historic Site 2 refugee camp in the late 1980s, Svay Sareth became a co-founder of the vibrant non-governmental organization and art school Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battambang in 1994. In 2002, the artist continued his studies in France, earning the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Études des Arts Plastiques - Master of Fine Arts in 2009, after which he returned to Siem Reap to live and work.
Career
Drawing on personal experience, Svay Sareth works across the mediums of sculpture, installation and performance, creating artworks that examine some of the many facets of war: violence, power, fear, resistance, futility, loss and survival. Svay’s artworks often repurpose simple objects from everyday life as a means to investigate and confront contemporary issues within and beyond Cambodia’s borders.
Svay Sareth’s recent exhibitions include The Mirror and Monitor of Democracy in Asia, Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju in 2014, 4th Singapore Biennale in 2013, Phnom Penh Rescue Archaeology, The Disappearance, Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore and ifa, Berlin and Stuttgart in 2013.
Svay's solo exhibitions include "I, Svay Sareth, eat rubber sandals" in 2015, "Traffic Circle" in 2012, both SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh, Cambodia and "La Terre Ferme", French Institute, Phnom Penh in 2010.
His residencies include Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore in 2016 and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York City in 2013.
Views
Quotations:
"The sun, the wind, the smell of the trees and the river. Touching and feeling all those things that I’d never known before. It was like I was reborn. It was a rebirth of my imagination and a rebirth of my thinking. But most of all, it was a rebirth of my energy, an energy that I had kept inside me for so long and could now explode."
"We had no prospects. We had no land, no house. Imagine: you have lost a lot of your family, and you have terrible memories in your mind. How can you move forward?"