This painting is one of the earliest examples of the maturation of You Khin’s style. Works from this point onward typically feature more dense, complex compositions with an emphasis on multiple cubist-like planar surfaces, a focus on migrants as subject matter, and appearance of birds, cages, and other symbols of freedom. The work depicts a bustling market scene, and reflects the artist’s attraction to aspects of life in Sudan he experienced as “exotic” and new, including people’s typical daily attire, anatomical proportions, and widespread poverty. You Khin (b. 1947, Cambodia; d. 2009, Cambodia) is believed to be the only Cambodian artist who was actively exhibiting before the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge period, who continued to professionally practice and exhibit during the ensuing decades. His work from the 1970s onwards has been consistently engaged with a cubist-like style of semi-abstraction, and with depicting urban scenes, often with an unsentimental focus on migrants and poverty as subject matter. Khin's biography is defined by his travels: living and working in Cambodia until 1973, then in France until 1977, then in Sudan until 1979, then in the Ivory Coast until 1981, then in Qatar until 1999, then in London until 2004, then in Cambodia until his death in 2009.
