AsiaLIFE

The year 2010 has been good for female contemporary visual artists in Cambodia. Supported by some key actors in the arts scene, young Khmer women artists are staking their claims and demanding to be heard, bringing with them a sense of empowerment and courage, but they still face an uphill battle. Words by Nora Lindstrom.

A Khmer proverb states: “Women can never be apart from the kitchen.” Out of sight, out of mind, women cook and clean. Not so Tith Kanitha. As part of the female artists’ exhibition Hey Sister, Where are you Going? at Sovanna Mall in November, she presented an installation featuring four simple clay stoves. Three were whole, representing the confinement that many women sense in the private sphere. One, representing herself, was broken.

“A woman working at the mall saw me smash one of the stoves at the opening of the exhibition,” the 23-year-old artist relates of what was possibly the first piece of performance art by a Khmer woman. “She later came up to me to talk about it. That was a success for me.”

Kanitha is one of the most exciting up-and-coming young Khmer artists. With her wild, unruly hair and quirky way of dressing, she certainly fits the part. Since participating in the Selapak Neari women’s art project in 2007, she has climbed the ladder of Cambodia’s art scene, exhibiting at Java Café & Gallery, Meta House, the CCF and Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre. A graduate in design, she hopes to get people thinking through the installations she makes. “You can’t change people, but people can understand your idea, and change a little,” she says.

This year has proved a watershed for contemporary female visual artists in Cambodia. Hey Sister was the second art event in less than six months to celebrate women artists, while at least five women have had solo exhibitions in the capital over the year. Compared to three years ago when Khmer-Canadian artist Linda Saphan started the Selapak Neari project, this represents significant progress.

“I did Selapak Neari because there was no support for contemporary art forms for women to turn to,” says Saphan.

The project brought together seven local and international artists to share and exchange ideas and visions through workshops. It culminated in the first ever all-female contemporary art exhibition at the Plastic Art Department of the Ministry of Culture.

Dana Langlois of JavaArts agrees that women artists in Cambodia have had a slow start. “But that’s not unusual,” she says. “Like in any culture, women have not been pushed into art. Educating a daughter in the arts is a privilege.”

Langlois believes that the concept of being an artist in Cambodia can sometimes be confused with the idea of being an entertainer–a word that often has negative connotations here. “It has not been considered good for women to be artists,” she says.

In a country where the contemporary visual arts scene as a whole is still in its infancy, being a female artist can be doubly difficult.

“The society in Cambodia is very male dominated, so until recently there was not much space for female artists, not only from an external perspective, but also an internal one in terms of how women define themselves,” says Meta House’s Lydia Parusol, who curated Hey Sister.

Overall money is scarce, and there’s even less for women who are hardly recognised as contemporary visual artists.

“Most Cambodian families do not have an issue with a girl studying traditional art forms, as that brings in money from tourism,” says Saphan. “It’s in the contemporary scene that it’s harder for young women to make a living.”

But it’s not just about money. Langlois notes how more developed arts scenes still struggle with placing female artists, while family demands such as starting a family lead many Cambodian women to postpone their careers.

This is certainly true in Cambodia. Parusol relates the story of how a female artist from a family of artisans was discouraged from pursuing her contemporary art. “I asked her to take part in a project, and she told me she would love to but that her family was very traditional and did not want their daughter to do something that was not in line with the family history.”

Raising Women
To lift the profile of existing female artists, as well as to encourage future ones, Langlois together with Parusol organised the You Khin Memorial Prize competition earlier this year. Supported by the US Embassy, the competition finale took place in June, with Duong Saree, 53, one of a handful of older female artists, winning the first prize for her traditional painting Woman Picking Water Lilies.

Photographer Try Sophal, 20, clinched the student award, while another ten artists, most of them in their twenties, were given honourable mentions. In total, 45 works of art were submitted by women from all over the country.

“The You Khin Prize brought female artists out of the shadows,” says Langlois. “They are now doing a bit of catching up.”

Chhan Dina was one of the ten artists who received an honourable mention in the competition. A painter and sculptor for more than a decade, Dina says one of the challenges she has faced as an artist is the lack of exhibition space to share her art with others. The You Khin competition and the Hey Sister exhibition have changed that.

“We now have opportunities to share, as well as a lot of encouragement,” she says.

Entitled Voyage of Realization, her own piece in the recent exhibition features four clay sculptures mounted on illuminated bamboo boxes. With a face and hands emerging out of the bamboo, the sculptures depict different stages of self-realisation, from striving to express yourself to attainment of your full potential.

Like Kanitha, Dina uses abstraction to get her point across. Voyage of Realization is as much an exploration of freedom of speech, as a depiction of the challenge of self-expression faced by many female artists.

According to Parusol, women in the Cambodian arts scene struggle to attain their full potential. “Many women don’t know themselves, which makes it difficult for them to express themselves through art,” she says.

Khchao Touch, one of few full-time female artists in the kingdom, never even considered herself an artist, before others branded her as such. “I just drew and then people wanted to exhibit my work,” she says. “It surprised me when people told me I was an artist, but it also pushed me to create more art.”

Efforts to promote female artists are now bearing fruit. “The scene is starting to grow and women are not afraid to show they are artists,” says Parusol.

Art or Female Art?
In promoting art made specifically by women, curators like Langlois, Parusol, and Saphan face the age-old feminist problem of whether they are supporting women artists because of their gender, or because of their artistic skills.

Langlois maintains positive discrimination is needed to kick start the scene.

Parusol agrees. “The point is that when women aren’t recognised as artists, you need to start somewhere,” she says. “It’s very important to first have a women’s voice.”

Yet Saphan says she felt no need to brand the Selapak Neari exhibition as female. “500 people showed up at the opening and no one noticed it was 18 national and international female artists,” she says. “I did not feel the need to accentuate the female aspect but rather the artistic journey.”

She maintains one of the biggest challenges facing women in the arts is to break out of the female artist mould. “They are artists because they are good at it, and not because they are women.”

That’s certainly where Kanitha stands. “I am an artist, not a female artist,” she says.

Focusing on female themes may be part and parcel of developing a more general feminist consciousness.

“I don’t feel a need to do only female art, but women like to draw other women because we know their feelings,” says Dina. “I’m a girl, I don’t know much about men.”

Oeur Sokuntevy, one of the most established young female artists in Cambodia, uses art to tell her story as a Cambodian woman. “For me, it’s about the story,” she says. “Women see art in a different way.”

In her most recent exhibition, Love to Death at the CCF, Tevy uses her own experiences to question the familial roles of women, their social status and relationships between men and women. Her paintings are bold and explicit, depicting intimate romantic and sexual situations.

Langlois, who gave Tevy her first solo exhibition back in 2006, is a big fan of her work. “She challenges the system most directly, without even intending to,” Langlois says. “She is completely unapologetic.”

Hiem An Kannitha, 26, is equally unapologetic, taking direct issue with the position of women in Khmer society. Entitled It’s Me, her mixed media on canvas exhibited at Sovanna Mall features pictures of women cut out of magazines, with a papier mache face emerging from the collage imprisoned in the image by a chain and lock.

“I am a woman living in a society with many cultural and traditional expectations of women,” she says. “But I never care about anything. [...] This is the way that I’ve found my life. I need freedom, to make decisions myself, and I have to do what I want.”

Breaking the Chains
Dina, Kanitha, and Tevy all describe creating art as an expression of freedom. Yet that freedom is delicate. “Most Khmer artists are a bit afraid, it is hard to say some things,” says Dina.

Politics is one thing, but the key issue facing female artists so far has been more about a lack of acknowledgment and support. It is not long ago that even arts enthusiasts were openly stating that there were no female artists in Cambodia.

Cambodia’s situation is not unique. As the contemporary arts scene has developed in neighbouring countries, women have become increasingly visible.

“Thai women are more fearless in crossing boundaries … more edgy,” says Parusol. “Thailand has a more open atmosphere.” Likewise, she says that women in Vietnam are more aggressive. “There’s more open censorship there, but female artists are definitely defining themselves as professional artists.”

The next few years will determine whether Cambodia’s female artists will follow suit. Kanitha has no doubts she will. “People ask me what I want to do in the future,” she says. “That makes me angry. I am an artist.” And here to stay, it seems.