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ពីអតីតជាតិ แต่ปางก่อน
You Are From My Past Life




You Are From My Past Life (Khmer: ពីអតីតជាតិ) (Thai: แต่ปางก่อน) locates sites of return and reincarnation: a poetic meditation on the afterlives of refugees through Buddhist ontology. Gridded wooden structures demarcate the space, open portals, and unsettle the spatial tension between what’s “there” and what’s not: absence and presence, light and shadow, front and back, obstructions and passages, flatness and depth, insider and outsider.

Abstracted cut-out shapes on plywood were derived from iPhone images of Khao-I-Dang taken during fieldwork in 2022 and then traced as silhouettes, and bookend by pattern and decorative motifs from architectural ironworks. Paper pulp on the paintings were made from beaten Khmer Times newspaper from the local market near my studio in Phnom Penh during the production of this exhibition. All materials for the installation were locally sourced in Phnom Penh and Chiang Mai, and/or upcycled.

A simulacrum of an encampment with dense landscapes, vernacular architecture, and fragmented timelines — this exhibition begs, “What happens when we return to where our bodies came from?” Across oceans and mountains, viewers are invited to (un-)map and (de-)territorialize “home” as a vanishing point beyond the horizon in order to constellate alternate points of return.



09.11.2024–11.24.2024



Kalm Village 
Museum of Makers Gallery

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Curated by:
Achariyar Rojanapirom




Credit

This exhibition was made possible with assistance from Sovanchandy Mao, Kalm Village staff and install crew as well as funding from the Einaudi International Travel Grant at Cornell University.

The exhibition title borrows a line of song lyrics from “Nights” by Frank Ocean.



Artist’s note

A reading table with related books and a UNHCR documentary was presented as part of the exhibition to help orient visitors to Khao-I-Dang and the history of Cambodia.

I recommend the 1989 documentary Site 2 by Rithy Panh as further viewing for a more dignified look into the lives of Cambodian refugees at that time.

Additionally, this text by scholar Khathaleeya Liamdee and A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes on Belonging by Dionne Brand are recommended as supplemental reading materials.




Exhibition Documentation

Installation view, You Are From My Past Life, Museum of Makers Gallery at Kalm Village, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2024. Photos by Marisa Srijunpleang.















Sopheak Sam Logo with floral line graphic  

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