Socially-Engaged Art Projects from Cambodia

The three projects highlight a few key points of the development of contemporary art in Cambodia from 2015-2017, in particular those aimed at engaging their concerned communities and society. It also sheds light on the creative energy and movements in the capital city of Phnom Penh as well as in the northern part: Siem Reap and Battambang. Here “socially-engaged art” is considered openly as art that sets to engage with the society. That it doesn’t concern only the aesthetics, but it also has a social mission. That it challenges and pushes the boundary and possibility of how art meets and may influence the real world.

Case Study 1: Visual Arts Open (2005)

Phnom Penh’s first contemporary art festival, Visual Arts Open introduced 19 Cambodian and Cambodian diaspora artists across generations who worked and lived in Cambodia. The purpose of the festival was to “to bring to the public the best of Cambodian contemporary art and to create a sense of community among artists across different media.” Running over three weeks, the festival presented 8 exhibitions, talks and tour, which took place in various venues across the city including art galleries, restaurants, bars and shops. 

While the festival doesn’t appear to have any special socially-engaged aspect, however, it needs to be understood from the Cambodian context at that time. Cambodian contemporary art only started to gain its currency the late 1990s. Visual Arts Open, for the first time, through Saklapel association, organised and gathered visual artists forming a sense of artist community. The festival also ambitiously introduced multiple contemporary art exhibitions that took places in both art and non-art spaces reaching an expansive audience. The festival played an important role in the development of visual art landscape in Cambodia, inspiring many artists and self-organised groups to later develop festival models that engaged with a wide city audience.

Case Study 2: Giant Puppet Project (2007-)

Established in 2007, Giant Puppet Project is an annual program which consists of an educational component and a public engagement aspect, with a clear social mission. In each edition, the project involves hundreds of children and young adults from local schools and those from disadvantaged background in a three-weeks workshop to create large-scale puppets, with the facilitation support from artists and art students from Phare Ponleu Seplak art school in Battambang. The project culminates in a daylight and night parade of the puppets through the city streets attracting thousands of audiences. While the project offers a fun and creative platform of co-creations for the participating children, they also learn about various social and environmental topics such as road safety, hygiene, endangered species, and nature, which are reflected in the puppet models they make. The project usually takes place in Siem Reap with some editions in Battambang.

Case Study 3: Sa Sa Art Projects at the White Building (2010-2017)

Initiated and co-run by Stiev Selapak Collective, Sa Sa Art Projects is a long-running and active Cambodian-run art initiative & space in Phnom Penh. Its first chapter took place in the former modernist social housing complex known as the White Building, part of a 1960s post-independence public and cultural district. Before its demolition in 2017, the White Building was home to a vibrant community including generations of artists and everyday Cambodians. It was a micro city in itself with self-support facilities such as markets, restaurants, salons, repair shops, and entertainment venues.

Sa Sa Art Projects experimented with various forms of art experience that manifested in workshops, events, engagements and collaborations with the White Building residents and that took place throughout the White Building neighborhood. Either a cleaning art project that triggered a series of neighborhood cleaning campaign, or a monthly village cinema that transformed a café into a semi-outdoor theater, or a performance on the building’s rooftop, these projects brought together artists, students, and residents to co-organise, share resources, and enjoy the experience together. This form of organising is vital as a mechanism to exercise agency.