Record Player

Svay Ken (1933-2008) is a significant figure in the emergence of contemporary art practice in Cambodia. After a lifetime of working in a hotel, and without any formal art training, he began to paint in the early 1990s. This was a time of increased international engagement with Cambodia as a result of the large-scale United Nations-led international peacekeeping occupation there in 1992-93. Svay Ken was the first “Cambodian artist” to be included in an international biennale or museum exhibition outside the country in several decades, heralding a new period of regional and international curatorial interest in Cambodia in the 21st century.Svay Ken’s paintings turned away from the picturesque images of Cambodia which dominated in many artists’ practice at the time, instead creating quotidian, autobiographical or narrative images that sometimes connected the grand narratives of Cambodian history and culture to the intimacy of daily life, yet returned repeatedly to unidealised depictions of anonymous, ordinary people and objects from daily life. In part, this reflected a kind of documentary impulse, whereby the artist sought to record aspects of life which he perceived to be changing or at risk in a time of rapid transformation brought on by urbanization, “development” and international investment. This personal and political desire to record change has recurred in varying forms in the later practices of many contemporary arts in Cambodia during the 21st century. Moreover, Svay Ken’s emphasis on quotidian scenes when coupled with his distinct painting style—often called “naïve,” with reference to his lack of formal training, and certainly distinct from the style of most painters in Cambodia—opened the possibility for new kinds of formal and compositional experimentation.